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WALLED TOWNS 






WALLED TOWNS 



By 
RALPH ADAMS CRAM 

LITT.D., LL.D. 




BOSTON 

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 

M D CCCC XIX 






0& 



Copyright, 1919 
By Marshall Jones Company 



All Tights reserved 
First Printing, September, 1919 



OCi 2u I9I9 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, V. S. A. 



©CI.A535375 



WALLED TOWNS 



PROLOGUE 

THE stone-flagged path on the top of 
the high walls winds along within 
the battlemented parapet, broken 
here and there by round turrets, steeple- 
crowned barriers of big timbers and, at 
wider intervals, great towers, round or 
square or many-sided, where bright ban- 
ners blow in the unsullied air. From one 
side you may look down on and into the dim 
city jostling the ramparts with crowding 
walls and dizzy roofs, from the other the 
granite scarp drops sheer to the green fields 
and vari-coloured gardens and shadowy or- 
chards full forty feet below. 

Within, the city opens up in kaleido- 
scopic vistas as you walk slowly around the 
walls : here are the steep roofs of tall houses 
with delicate dormers, fantastic chimney 
stacks, turret cupolas with swinging weather 
vanes ; here the closed gardens of rich bur- 

[i] 



WALLED TOWNS 

gesscs, full of arbours, flowers, pleached 
alleys of roses, espaliers of pear and necta- 
rine ; here a convent or guild chapel, newly 
worked of yellow stone and all embroidered 
with the garniture of niches, balustrades, 
pinnacles. Here, under one of the city 
gates, opens a main street, narrow and wind- 
ing but walled with high-gabled houses, 
each story jutting beyond the lower, carved 
from pavement to ridge like an Indian 
jewel casket, and all bedecked with flaming 
colour and burnished gold-leaf. Below is 
the stream and eddy of human life; crafts- 
men in the red and blue and yellow of their 
guild liveries, slow-pacing merchants and 
burghers in furred gowns of cramoisy and 
Flemish wool and gold-woven Eastern silks ; 
scholars in tippet and gown, youths in 
slashed doublets and gay hose, grey friars 
and black and brown, with a tonsured monk 
or two, and perhaps a purple prelate, at- 
tended, and made way for with deep rever- 
ence. Threading the narrow road rides a 
great lady on a gaily caparisoned palfrey, 
with an officious squire in attendance, or 
perhaps a knight in silver armour, crested 
wonderfully, his emblazoned shield hang- 
ing at his saddle-bow, — living colour mix- 

[2] 



PROLOGUE 

ing and changing between leaning walls of 
still colour and red gold. 

Here a stream or canal cuts the houses 
in halves, a quay with gay booths and mar- 
kets of vari-coloured vegetables along one 
side, walls of pink brick or silvery stone 
on the other, jutting oriels hanging over 
the stream, and high, curved bridges, each 
with its painted shrine, crossing here and 
there, with gaudy boats shoving along un- 
derneath. Here a square opens out, ringed 
with carved houses, — a huge guild hall on 
one side, with its dizzy watch-tower where 
hang the great alarum bells; long rows of 
Gothic arches, tall mullioned windows, and 
tiers and ranges of niched statues all gold 
and gules and azure, painted perhaps by 
Messer Jan Van Eyck or Messer Hans 
Memling. In the centre is a spurting foun- 
tain with its gilt figures and chiselled para- 
pet, and all around are market booths with 
bright awnings where you may buy strange 
things from far lands, chaffering with dark 
men from Syria and Saracen Spain and 
Poland and Venice and Muscovy. 

And everywhere, tall in the midst of tall 
towers and spires, vast, silvery, light as air 
yet solemn and dominating, the great shape 

[3] 



WALLED TOWNS 

of the Cathedral, buttressed, pinnacled, 
beautiful with rose windows and innu- 
merable figures of saints and angels and 
prophets. 

There is no smoke and no noxious gas; 
the wind that sweeps over the roofs and 
around the delicate spires is as clean and 
clear as it is in the mountains; the painted 
banners flap and strain, and the trees in the 
gardens rustle beneath. There is no sound 
except human sound ; the stir and murmur of 
passing feet, the pleasant clamour of voices, 
the muffled chanting of cloistered nuns in 
some veiled chapel, the shrill cry of street 
venders and children, and the multitudi- 
nous bells sounding for worship in mon- 
astery or church and, at dawn and noon and 
evening, the answering clangour of each to 
all for the Angelus. 

And from the farther side of the walls a 
wide country of green and gold and the far, 
thin blue of level horizon or distant moun- 
tains. There are no slums and no suburbs 
and no mills and no railway yards; the 
green fields and the yellow grain, the or- 
chards and gardens and thickets of trees 
sweep up to the very walls, slashed by wind- 
ing white roads. Alongside the river, limpid 

[4] 



PROLOGUE 

and unstained, are mills with slow wheels 
dripping quietly, there where the great 
bridge with its seven Gothic arches and its 
guarding towers curves in a long arc from 
shore to shore. Far away is perhaps a grey 
monastery with its tall towers, and on the 
hill a greyer castle looming out of the 
woods. Along the road blue-clad peasants 
come and go with swaying flocks of sheep 
and fowl and cattle. Here are dusty pil- 
grims with staff and wallet and broad hats, 
pursy merchants on heavy horses with har- 
ness of red velvet and gold embroidery; 
a squadron of mounted soldiers with lances 
and banners, and perhaps my Lord Bishop 
on his white mule, surrounded by his re- 
tainers, and on progress to his see city from 
some episcopal visitation; perhaps even a 
plumed and visored knight riding on quest 
or to join a new Crusade to the Holy Land. 
Colour everywhere, in the fresh country, 
in the carven houses, in gilded shrines and 
flapping banners, in the clothes of the people 
like a covey of vari-coloured tropical birds. 
No din of noise, no pall of smoke, but 
fresh air blowing within the city and with- 
out, even through the narrow streets, none 
too clean at best, but cleaner far than they 

[5] 



WALLED TOWNS 

were to be thereafter and for many long 
centuries to come. 

Such was any walled town in the fif- 
teenth century, let us say in France or 
England or Italy, in Flanders or Spain or 
the Rhineland. Carcassonne, Rothenbourg, 
San Gimignano, Oxford, ghosts of the past, 
arouse hauntings of memory today, but they 
tell us little, for the colour is gone, and the 
stillness and the clean air. Ghosts they are 
and not living things; and life, colour, clar- 
ity, these were the outward marks of the 
Walled Towns of the Middle Ages. 



" It was not a pretty station where 
McCann found himself, and he glared ill- 
naturedly around with restless, aggressive 
eyes. The brick walls, the cheaply grained 
doors bearing their tarnished legends, 
" Gents," " Ladies," " Refreshment Saloon," 
the rough raftered roof over the tracks, — 
everything was black and grimy with years 
of smoke, belching even now from the big 
locomotive, and gathering like an ill-con- 
ditioned thunder-cloud over the mob of 
scurrying, pushing men and women, a mob 
that swelled and scattered constantly in 
[6] 



PROLOGUE 

fretful confusion. A hustling business-man 
with a fat, pink face and long sandy whis- 
kers, his silk hat cocked on one side in 
grotesque assumption of jauntiness, tripped 
over the clay-covered pick of a surly la- 
bourer, red of face and sweaty, blue of 
overalls and mud-coloured of shirt, and as 
he stumbled over the annoying implement 
scowled coarsely, and swore, with his cigar 
between his teeth. 

" Ragged and grimy children, hardly old 
enough to walk, sprawled and scrambled 
on the dirty platform, and as McCann 
hurried by, a five-year-old cursed shrilly a 
still more youthful little tough, who an- 
swered in kind. Vulgar theatre-bills in rank 
reds and yellows flaunted on the cindery 
walls; discarded newpapers, banana skins, 
cigar butts, and saliva were ground together 
vilely under foot by the scuffling mob. Dirt, 
meanness, ugliness everywhere — in the 
unhappy people no less than in their 
surroundings. . . . 

"The prospect was not much better out- 
side than in. The air was thick with fine 
white dust, and dazzling with fierce sunlight. 
On one side was a wall of brick tenements, 
with liquor saloons, cheap groceries, and a 

[7] 



WALLED TOWNS 

fish-market below, all adding their mite to 
the virulence of the dead, stifling air. Above, 
men in dirty shirt-sleeves lolled out of the 
grimy windows, where long festoons of 
half-washed clothes drooped sordidly. On 
the other side, gangs of workmen were hur- 
riedly repairing the ravages of a fire that 
evidently had swept clear a large space 
in its well-meant but ineffectual attempts 
at purgation. Gaunt black chimneys 
wound with writhing gas-pipes, tottering 
fragments of wall blistered white on one 
side, piles of crumbling bricks where men 
worked sullenly loading blue carts, mingled 
with new work, where the walls, girdled 
with yellow scaffolding, were rising higher, 
uglier than before; the plain factory walls 
with their rows of square windows less 
hideous by far than those buildings where 
some ignorant contractor was trying by the 
aid of galvanized iron to produce an effect 
of tawdry, lying magnificence. Dump- 
carts, market-waggons, shabby hacks, 
crawled or scurried along in the hot dust. 
A huge dray loaded with iron bars jolted 
over the granite pavement with a clanging, 
clattering din that was maddening. In fact, 
none of the adjuncts of a thriving, progres- 

[8] 



PROLOGUE 

sive town were absent, so far as one could 
see. . . . 

"The carriage threaded its way through 
the roaring crowd of vehicles, passing the 
business part of the city, and entering a tract 
given over to factories, hideous blocks of 
barren brick and shabby clapboards, 
through the open windows of which came 
the brain-killing whir of heavy machinery, 
and hot puffs of oily air. Here and there 
would be small areas between the buildings 
where foul streams of waste from some 
factory of cheap calico would mingle dirt- 
ily with pools of green, stagnant water, the 
edges barred with stripes of horrible pinks 
and purples where the water had dried 
under the fierce sun. All around lay piles 
of refuse, — iron hoops, broken bottles, bar- 
rels, cans, old leather stewing and fuming 
in the dead heat, and everywhere escape- 
pipes vomiting steam in spurts. Over it 
all was the roar of industrial civilization. 
McCann cast a pitying look at the pale, 
dispirited figures passing languidly to and 
fro in the midst of the din and the foul 
air, and set his teeth closely. 

" Presently they entered that part of the 
city where live the poor, they who work 

[9] 



WALLED TOWNS 

in the mills, when they are not on strike, 
or the mills are not shut down, — as barren 
of trees or grass as the centre of the city, 
the baked grey earth trodden hard between 
the crowded tenements painted lifeless 
greys, as dead in colour as the clay about 
them. Children and goats crawled starv- 
edly around or huddled in the hot shadow 
of the sides of the houses. This passed, and 
then came the circle of " suburban resi- 
dences," as crowded almost as the tottering 
tenements, but with green grass around 
them. Frightful spectacles these, — "Queen 
Anne " and " Colonial " vagaries painted 
lurid colours, and frantic in their cheap 
elaboration. Between two affected little 
cottages painted orange and green and with 
round towers on their corners, stood a new 
six-story apartment-house with vulgar front 
of brown stone, " Romanesque " in style, but 
with long flat sides of cheap brick. McCann 
caught the name on the big white board 
that announced " Suites to let." " Hotel 
Plantagenet," and grinned savagely. 

"'Then, at last, even this region of specu- 
lative horrors came to an end, giving place 
to a wide country road that grew more and 
more beautiful as they left the town far 

[10] 



PROLOGUE 

behind. McCann's eyebrows were knotted 
in a scowl. The ghastly nonsense, like a 
horrible practical joke, that the city had 
been to him, excited, as it always did, all 
the antagonism within his rebellious nature. 
Slowly and grimly he said to himself, yet 
half aloud, in a tone of deliberation, as 
though he were cursing solemnly the town 
he had left: 'I hope from my soul that I 
may live to see the day when that damned 
city will be a desolate wilderness; when 
those chimneys shall rise smokeless; when 
those streets shall be stony valleys between 
grisly ridges of fallen brick; when Nature 
itself shall shrink from repairing the evil 
that man has wrought; when the wild birds 
shall sweep widely around that desolation 
that they may not pass above; when only 
rats and small snakes shall crawl though the 
ruin of that " thriving commercial and 
manufacturing metropolis"; when the very 
name it bore in the days of its dirty glory 
shall have become a synonym for horror 
and despair!' Having thus relieved him- 
self he laughed softly, and felt better."* 

* "The Decadent," 1893. 



[II] 



WrAT is the way out? The question 
that was universal during the war, 
"How has this thing come?" 
gives place to the other that is no less 
poignant and no less universal, "What is the 
way out?" There must be a way; this coil of 
uttermost confusion must be solvable, must 
be solved — */ only we knew the way! There 
can be no going back, of that we are sure, 
and the industry of the serious-minded men, 
busy with set faces and a brave optimism, 
in their cheerful efforts to restore the old 
course of events after an accidental inter- 
lude, fills us with a kind of shame that 
people who have lived through the war 
should have learned so little both of the war 
and from it. Four years have ended the 
work of four centuries and — there is no 
going back. "Finis" has been written at 
the end of a long episode and there is no 
way by which we can knit together again 
the strands that are severed forever. There 

[13] 



WALLED TOWNS 

is even less desire than ability. It does not 
show very well in the red light of war, that 
act in the great world-drama that opened 
with the dissolution of Medievalism and 
the coming of the Renaissance; that de- 
veloped through the Reformation, the revo- 
lutions of the eighteenth century and the 
sequent industrialism, to its climax and 
catastrophe in war. There is little in it we 
would have back if we could, but the un- 
stable equilibrium in which we hang for the 
moment, poised between reactionism and 
universal anarchy, cannot last; already the 
balance is inclining towards chaos, and in 
the six months that will intervene between 
the writing of this and its publication it 
may very well be that the decision of inertia 
will be made and the plunge effected that 
will bring us down into that unintelligent 
repetition of history now so clearly indi- 
cated in Russia, Austria, Germany. We 
can neither return nor remain but — would 
we go on, at least along the lines that are 
at present indicated? Are we tempted by 
the savage and stone-age ravings and raven- 
ings of Bolshevism? Have we any inclina- 
tion towards that super-imperialism of the 
pacifist-internationalist-Israelitish "League 

[14] 



WALLED TOWNS 

of Free Nations " that comes in such ques- 
tionable shape? Does State Socialism with 
all its materialistic mechanisms appeal to 
us? Other alleviation is not offered and 
in these we can see no encouragement. 

It is the eternal dilemma of the Two Al- 
ternatives, which is nevertheless no more 
than a vicious sophism: " Either you will 
take this or you must have that," the star- 
ling-cry of partizan politics by which 
"democracies" have lived. In all human 
affairs there are never only two alternatives, 
there is always a third and sometimes more; 
but this unrecognized alternative never 
commands that popular leadership which 
"carries the election," and it does not ap- 
peal to a public that prefers the raw obvi- 
ousness of the extremes. Yet it is the third 
alternative that is always the right one, 
except when the God-made leaders, the 
time having come for a new upward rush 
of the vital force in society, put themselves 
in the vanguard of the new advance and 
lift the world with them, as it were by main 
force. Reactionism or Bolshevism: "Un- 
der which king, Bezonian? Speak or die! " 
We are told that the old world of before- 
the-war must be restored in its integrity or 

[15] 



WALLED TOWNS 

we must fall a victim to the insane anarchy 
of a proletariat in revolt, and for many of 
us there is little to choose between the two. 
We have seen how fragile, artificial and 
insecure is civilization, how instantly and 
hopelessly it can crumble into a sort of 
putrid dissolution the moment its conven- 
tions are challenged and the ultimate prin- 
ciples of democracy are put in practice, and 
we do not like it. We have seen Russia, 
Germany, Hungary, and sporadic but dis- 
quieting examples in every State, no matter 
how conservative it may be or how success- 
ful in a first stamping out of the flame. On 
the other hand, we saw the triumph of 
"Modern Civilization" in the twenty-five 
years preceding the Great War, and as we 
realize now what it was, through the reve- 
lations it has made of itself during the last 
five years, we like it quite as little as the 
other. We see it now as an impossible far- 
rago of false values, of loud-mouthed senti- 
mentality and crude, cold-blooded practices ; 
of gross, all-pervading injustice sicklied 
o'er with the pale cast of smug humanita- 
rianism; a democracy of form that was 
without ideal or reality in practice; im- 
perialism, materialism and the quantitative 

[16] 



WALLED TOWNS 

standard. Is there no alternative other than 
this, restored in its unvarying ugliness of 
fact and of manifestation, or the imitative 
era of a new Dark Ages which will be 
brought to pass by the new hordes of Huns 
and Vandals that again, after fifteen cen- 
turies, menace a greater Imperialism than 
Rome with an identical fate? There is a 
third alternative; there may be more, but 
the one which makes its argument for ac- 
ceptance on the basis of history and experi- 
ence is here put forward for consideration. 

In three books already published in this 
series which has been issued from time to 
time during the Great War — "The Nem- 
esis of Mediocrity," "The Great Thousand 
Years" and "The Sins of the Fathers" — I 
have tried to determine certain of the causes 
which led to the tragical debacle of modern 
civilization at the very moment of its high- 
est supremacy; and now while mediocrity 
pitifully struggles to meet and solve an 
avalanche of problems it cannot cope 
withal, and anarchy, like Alaric and Attila 
and Genseric at the head of their united 
hosts, beat against the dissolving barriers 
of a forlorn and impotent and discredited 
culture, I would try to find some hints of 

[17] 



WALLED TOWNS 

the saving alternative, and if possible dis- 
cover some way out of the deadly impasse 
in which the world finds itself. 

From "The Nemesis of Mediocrity" it 
should be sufficiently clear that I do not 
believe that any mechanical devices what- 
ever will serve the purpose: neither the 
buoyant plan to "make the world safe for 
democracy," nor any extension and ampli- 
fication of "democratic" methods onward 
to woman's suffrage or direct legislation or 
proletarian absolutism through Russian 
Soviets, nor socialistic panaceas varying 
from a mild collectivism to Marxism and 
the Internationale, nor a league of nations 
and an imposing but impotent " Covenant," 
nor even a world-wide " League to Enforce 
Peace." We have heard something too much 
of late of peace, and not enough of justice; 
peace is not an end in itself, it is rather a 
by-product of justice. Through justice the 
world can attain peace, but through peace 
there is no guaranty that justice may be 
achieved. There must always be the mate- 
rial enginery through the operation of 
which the ideal is put into practice, but in 
the ideal lies the determining force, whether 
for good or evil, and by just so far as this 

[18] 



WALLED TOWNS 

is right in its nature will the mechanism 
operate for good ends. The best agent in 
the world, even the Catholic Church or 
the American Republic, may be employed 
towards evil and vicious ends whenever the 
energizing force is of a nature that operates 
towards darkness and away from the light. 

I have tried in " The Sins of the Fathers," 
to prove that the marks of degeneracy and 
constructive evil in the modernism that went 
to its ruin during the Great War, and is 
now accomplishing its destiny in the even 
more tragical epoch of after-the-war, are its 
imperialism, its materialism and its quan- 
titative standard — that is to say, its accept- 
ance of the gross aggregate in place of the 
unit of human scale, its standard of values 
which rejected the passion for perfection in 
favour of the numerical equivalent, and its 
denial of spirit as a reality rather than a 
mere mode of material action — while the 
only salvation for society is to be found in 
the restoration, in all things, of small human 
units, the testing of all things by value not 
bulk, and the acceptance once more of the 
philosophy of sacramentalism. 

It would be possible, I suppose, to de- 
velop a detailed scheme for the reconstruc- 

[19] 



WALLED TOWNS 

tion of the world along certain definite 
lines that would be in accordance with 
these principles, but the question would at 
once arise, How could it be made to work? 
Frankly, the question is unanswerable 
except by a categorical negative. The 
nineteenth-century superstition that life 
proceeds after an inevitable system of pro- 
gressive evolution, so defiant of history, so 
responsible in great degree for the many 
delusions that made the war not only pos- 
sible but inevitable, finds few now to do it 
honour. The soul is not forever engaged 
in the graceful industry of building for 
itself ever more stately mansions ; it is quite 
as frequently employed in defiling and de- 
stroying those already built, and in sub- 
stituting the hovel for the palace. It is not 
even, except at infrequent intervals, de- 
sirous of improving its condition. As a 
whole, man is not an animal that is eager for 
enlightenment that it may follow after the 
right. At certain crescent periods in the 
long process of history, when great prophets 
and leaders are raised up, it is forced, even 
against its will, to follow after the leaders 
when once the prophets have been consci- 
entiously stoned, and great and wonderful 
[20] 



WALLED TOWNS 

things result — Athens, Rome, Byzantium, 
Venice, Sicily, the cities of the Middle 
Ages, Flanders, Elizabethan England — 
but the untoward exertion is its own exe- 
cutioner, and always society sinks back 
into some form of barbarism from whence 
all is to be begun again. 

Nor is education — free, universal, secu- 
lar and "efficient" — an universal panacea 
for this persistent disease of backsliding; it 
is not even a palliative or a prophylactic. 
The most intensive educational period ever 
known had issue in the most preposterous 
war in history, initiated by the most highly 
and generally educated of all peoples, by 
them given a new content of disgrace and 
savagery, and issuing at last into Bolshe- 
vism and an obscene anarchy that would be 
ridiculous but for the omnipresent horror. 
And the same is true both of industrialism 
and democracy, for both have belied the 
promises of their instigators and have 
brought in, not peace and plenty and lib- 
erty, but universal warfare, outrageous 
poverty, and the tyranny of the ignorant 
and the unfit. 

Before the revelations of war, while the 
curious superstitions of the nineteenth cen- 

[21] 



WALLED TOWNS 

tury were still in vogue, it was widely held 
that evolution, education and democracy 
were irresistible, and that progress from then 
on must be continuous and by arithmetical 
if not geometrical progression. When the 
war came and the revelations began to un- 
fold themselves, it was held with equal com- 
prehensiveness that even if our civilization 
had been an illusion, our trinity of mecha- 
nistic saviours but a bundle of broken reeds, 
the war itself would prove a great regener- 
ative agency, and that out of its fiery purga- 
tion would issue forth a new spirit that 
would redeem the world. It is a fair ques- 
tion to ask whether those that once saw this 
bow of promise in the red skies have found 
the gold at the rainbow's end or are now 
even sure the radiance itself has not faded 
into nothingness. 

Every great war exhibits at least two 
phenomena following on from its end : the 
falling back into an abyss of meanness, 
materialism and self-seeking, with the swift 
disappearance of the spiritual exaltation 
developed during the fight, and the emer- 
gence sooner or later of isolated personal- 
ities who have retained the ardour of 
spiritual regeneration, who seem indeed to 
[22] 



WALLED TOWNS 

epitomize it within themselves, and who 
struggle, sometimes with success, sometimes 
with failure, to bring the mass of people 
back to their lost ideals and embody 
these in a better type of society. Appar- 
ently success or failure depends on whether 
the particular war in question came on the 
rise or the fall of the rhythmical curve that 
conditions all history. 

At the present moment the first of these 
two phenomena has shown itself. Whether 
it is in Russia or in the fragments of the de- 
spoiled Central Empires where the ominous 
horror of Bolshevism riots in a carnival of 
obscene destruction, or in the governments 
and " interests" and amongst the peoples 
of the Allies, there is now, corporately, no 
evidence of anything but a general break- 
down of ideals, and either an accelerating 
plunge into something a few degrees worse 
than barbarism, with the Dark Ages as its 
inevitable issue, or an equally fatal return 
to the altogether hopeless, indeed the pes- 
tilential, standards and methods of the 
fruition of modernism in the world-before- 
the-war. The new warfare is between these, 
the malignant old Two Alternatives; fear 
of one encompasses the other, and in each 

[23] 



WALLED TOWNS 

case all that is done is with the terror of 
Bolshevism conditioning all on the one 
hand, terror of reactionism on the other. 
Expediency, desperate self-preservation, is 
the controlling passion, and the principles 
of justice, right and reason are no longer 
operative. 

As this is written there is no sure indica- 
tion as to which of these alternatives is 
to prevail, but it is for the moment quite 
clearly indicated that it will be the one or 
the other, — either the tyranny of the de- 
graded, Bolshevism, universal anarchy, 
with the modernist reversal of all values 
succeeded by the post-modernist destruction 
of all values, or the triumph of reaction, 
with a return to the world-before-the-war 
for a brief period of profligate excess along 
all materialistic, intellectual and scientific 
lines not unlike the Restoration period of 
Charles II, with the same ruin achieved in 
the end though after a certain interlude. 
And yet the third alternative is theoretically 
possible: escape from the Scylla and Cha- 
rybdis of error through the opportune de- 
velopment of the second phenomenon, the 
reasonable certainty of which is indicated 
by history — the appearance of those leaders 

[24] 



WALLED TOWNS 

of vision and power who had been gener- 
ated through the alchemy of war. 

That in the end they will come we need 
not doubt, but in the meantime an errant 
world, leaderless and ungoverned, is urged 
swiftly on towards catastrophe of either 
one sort or another, nor will it wait the com- 
ing of the indispensable leaders. It is not 
from the men whose potential greatness was 
perfected and revealed by war, Cardinal 
Mercier, for example, or Marshal Foch, 
great leaders absolutely of the first class, 
that solution is to be sought, for in their age 
is sufficient inhibition. It is rather from 
those whose character has actually been 
made by war, youths perhaps, who have 
fought and found, either in the armies or 
the navies or in the air, or even in some 
of the non-combatant branches of the Serv- 
ice. Boys they are now, perhaps, in years, 
but into them has been poured the ener- 
gizing power that leads to mastership; to 
them is given the first fire of progressive 
revelation. Somewhere, in the still active 
units, on the way back to their homes and to 
civil life, or already mingled in the activi- 
ties from which they were called for their 
great testing, are those who sooner or later 

[25] 



WALLED TOWNS 

will find themselves the leaders of the quest 
for a new life for the world. The Divine 
finger-touch has been granted ; them, the 
spark of inspiration has lightened in their 
souls, but seldom is the generation swift; 
it may be years before it is effected, and 
meanwhile only the Two Alternatives 
remain. 

For my own purpose in this book, per- 
haps indeed so far as society itself is con- 
cerned, it is a matter of indifference which 
is the victor in the fight for supremacy; 
the ultimate issue will be the same 
though the roads are various. Universal 
beastliness issuant of Russia, or universal 
materialism redivivus, the conditions of life 
will be intolerable, and in the end a new 
thing will be built up as different on the one 
hand to anarchy as on the other it is differ- 
ent to the industrial-democratic-material- 
ist regime of the immediate past. With the 
former we are assured some five hundred 
years not unlike those that followed the fall 
of Rome; with the latter we at least are 
given the respite of a brief Restoration, dur- 
ing which the war-bred potencies may 
mature, and at the end of the few gross years 
which would be allotted to this status quo 
[26] 



WALLED TOWNS 

tf/z/^-civilization, become operative to avert 
the horror of a recrudescent Bolshevism. 
At least so we may hope ; on the other hand 
it may be doubted whether, after all, a re- 
vived and intensified materialism such as 
that which the reactionary element is at- 
tempting, would not afford an even less 
favourable and stimulating soil for foster- 
ing the possible war-potentialities than 
would red anarchy, for the suffocating qual- 
ities of gross luxuriance are sometimes more 
fatal than the desperate sensations of danger, 
adversity and shame. In any case, the im- 
mediate future is not one to be anticipated 
with enthusiasm or confidence and we shall 
do well to consider the course to be followed 
by those who reject the Two Alternatives 
and refuse to have any part in either. 



[27] 



II 

IT is not my intention to write another in 
the long list of Utopias with which 
man has amused himself, from Plato to 
H. G. Wells. Where the preceding vol- 
umes in this series have been frankly de- 
structive, I would make this volume con- 
structive, if only by suggestion. It is in no 
sense a programme, it is still less an effort at 
establishing an ideal. Let us call it " a way 
out," for it is no more than this; not " the " 
way, nor yet a way to anything approaching 
a perfect State, still less a perfect condition 
of life, but rather a possible issue out of a 
present impasse for some of those who, as I 
have said, peremptorily reject both of the 
intolerable alternatives now offered them. 

What I have to propose is based on ac- 
ceptance, at least substantially, of the criti- 
cisms of modernism that appear in "The 
Nemesis of Mediocrity" and in "The Sins 
of the Fathers " ; it also assumes the general 
accuracy of the interpretation of history 

[28] 



WALLED TOWNS 

attempted in "The Great Thousand Years," 
and the estimate of certain historic religio- 
social forces therein described. To those 
who dissent from these opinions this vol- 
ume will contain nothing and they will be 
well advised if they pursue it no further. 
Since it is written for those who have done 
me the honour to read these previous books, 
I shall not try to epitomize them here, as- 
suming as I do a certain familiarity with 
their general argument. All that it is 
necessary to say is that the assumption is 
made that "modern civilization" was es- 
sentially an inferior product; that it could 
have had no other issue than precisely such 
a war as occurred; that its fundamental 
weaknesses were its imperialism, its mate- 
rialism and its quantitative standard; that 
the particular type of "democracy" for 
which the world was to be made safe was and 
is a menace to righteous society, since it had 
lowered and reversed all standards, estab- 
lished the reign of the venal, the incapable 
and the unfit, and had destroyed all com- 
petent leadership while preventing its gen- 
eration, and that the only visible hope of 
recovery lay in a restoration of the unit of 
human scale, the passion for perfection, and 

[29] 



WALLED TOWNS 

a certain form of philosophy known as sac- 
ramentalism, with the precedents of the 
monastic method used as a basis of opera- 
tion, and the whole put in process through 
the leadership of great captains of men 
such as always in the past have accom- 
plished the building up of society after 
cataclysms similar to that which during five 
years has brought modernism to an end. 

Society is no longer to be dealt with as an 
unit, nor even as a congeries of units; it is 
a chaos, both as a whole and in each moiety 
thereof. The evolutionary process, if it 
ever existed, is now inoperative, and some- 
thing more nearly approaching devolution 
has taken its place. As under the earlier 
assault of the everlasting barbarian the 
great, imperial unity of Rome broke up 
into minute family fragments, and as the 
pseudo-unity of the Holy Roman Empire 
broke up into a myriad of heterogeneous 
states, so our own world, both political and 
social, is deliquescing into its elements, and 
no ingenious mechanism, however cleverly 
devised, can arrest the process for more than 
the briefest of periods. When the mech- 
anism breaks down, whether it is a year or 
ten years hence, the interrupted process of 
[30] 



WALLED TOWNS 

disintegration will continue to its appointed 
end. 

Man has always nursed the dream of 
corporate regeneration, of the finding or 
devising of some method or mechanism 
whereby society as a whole could be re- 
deemed en bloc. The dream has engen- 
dered many revolutions but the results have 
been other than those anticipated, and even 
these unexpected happenings have proved 
evanescent, with a constant return to the old 
evils and abuses. Persistently the world as 
a whole refuses regeneration. Latterly the 
ingenious device has somewhat superseded 
the violent changing of things, and democ- 
racy with its miscellaneous spawn of doc- 
trinaire inventions, industrialism with its 
facile subterfuges of political economy; 
evolution, education, socialism, each in turn 
has offered itself as the sovereign elixir. 
The war has quashed the major part, the 
following "peace" is dealing with the re- 
mainder. The last device of all, socialism, 
whether of the Marxian variety or of the 
Fabian sort, is now the most discredited of 
all, for Bolshevism on the one hand, state 
ownership, control, or management of in- 
dustry on the other, have both proved, the 

[31] 



WALLED TOWNS 

one intolerable, the other a bloody synonym 
for social extinction. 

Yet the way out must be found by those 
for whom the present scheme of existence is 
not good enough; for those who refuse to 
go back to the pre-war regime or on to the 
predicted era of anarchy. The way may 
be found, but it will reveal itself not 
through wide and democratic social proc- 
esses but through group action in which 
the units are few in number. The process 
will be one of withdrawal, of segregation, 
at first even of isolation; but if this really 
proves to be the right way, the end may be, 
as so often in the past, a centrifugal action 
developing from one originally centripetal, 
with an ultimate leavening of the whole 
lump. 

It may be remembered that in "The 
Great Thousand Years" I endeavoured to 
demonstrate the vibratory theory of history, 
whereby the life of society is conditioned 
by a rhythmical wave motion ; curves rising 
and descending, inflexibly though with 
varying trajectories, the falling curve meet- 
ing at some point the rising curve of a future 
coming into being, the crossing points form- 
ing the nodes of history, and spacing them- 

[32] 



WALLED TOWNS 

selves at five-century intervals either side 
the birth of Christ, or the year i A.D. In 
the same place I called attention to the cor- 
respondence in time (since the Christian 
era) between certain periodic manifestations 
of spiritual force, identical in nature though 
somewhat varied in fashion, and these nodal 
points; that is to say, the monastic idea 
as this showed itself in the first, sixth, 
eleventh and sixteenth centuries. This 
synchronism may be graphically explained 
thus, the thin line indicating the approxi- 
mate curve of social development, the 
shaded line the monastic manifestation: 




A THECURVE OF CIVILIZATION B THECURVE OF MONA5TICISM 



It would appear from this that now, 
while the next nodal point is possibly 
seventy-five years in the future, the next 
manifestations of monasticism should al- 
ready be showing itself. The curve of mod- 

[33] 



WALLED TOWNS 

ernism is now descending as precipitously 
as did that of Roman Imperialism, but 
already, to those who are willing to see, 
there are indisputable evidences of the 
rising of the following curve. Whether 
this is to emulate in lift and continuance the 
curves of Medievalism and of modernism, 
or whether it is to be but a poor copy of the 
sag and the low, heavy lift of the Dark 
Ages, is the question that man is to deter- 
mine for himself during the next two 
generations. 

Now as a matter of fact the last thirty 
years have shown an altogether astonishing 
recrudescence of the monastic spirit, while 
already the war has added enormously to 
its force and expansion. Thus far it has 
been wholly along old-established lines, 
which was to be expected; but as we ap- 
proach nearer and nearer to the next nodal 
point of the year 2000, we are bound to see 
a variant, a new expression of the inde- 
structible idea. This has always been the 
case. At the beginning of the Christian 
era the impulse was personal, the individ- 
ual was the unit, and the result was the an- 
chorites and hermits, each isolating himself 
in a hidden mountain cave, a hut in the 

[34] 



WALLED TOWNS 

desert or, if his fancy took this eccentric, on 
the top of a lonely column, like St. Simon 
Stylites. With St. Benedict the group be- 
came the unit, a sort of artificial family 
either of men or of women, as the case might 
be. He himself began as a hermit in the 
cleft of a far mountain, but within his own 
lifetime his original impulse was overrid- 
den and the new communal or group life 
came into being, though each monastery 
or convent was quite autonomous and self- 
contained. Five centuries later (or four, 
to speak more exactly) began the Cluniac 
reform, which was followed by the Cis- 
tercian movement, and here, though the old 
Benedictine mode was followed at first, in 
a brief time came the differentiation, for 
now all the houses of one order were united 
under a centralizing and coordinating 
force. Here we have the State as the par- 
allel of the new scheme. Latest of all, in 
other five centuries, came still a new model, 
the army, with the Society of Jesus as its 
perfect exponent. So we have at almost 
exact five-century intervals four models 
of monasticism: the individual, the family 
the State and the army. A fifth is now due; 
what will be its form? 

[35] 



WALLED TOWNS 

It will, I think, be one in which the 
human family is made the unit. It will not 
supersede the older modes but supplement 
them, for the monks, canons-regular and 
friars, of the old tradition and the old line, 
will be as necessary then as ever; instead it 
will be an amplification of the indestructible 
idea, fitted to, and developing from, the 
new conditions which confront society. In 
addition to the groups of either men or 
women, living in a community life apart, 
and vowed to poverty, celibacy and obedi- 
ence, there will be groups of natural fami- 
lies, father, mother and children, entering 
into a communal but not by any means 
"communistic" life, within those Walled 
Towns they will create for themselves, in 
the midst of the world but not of it, where 
the conditions of life will be determined 
after such sort as will make possible that 
real and wholesome and joyful and simple 
and reasonable living that has long been 
forbidden by the conditions of modern 
civilization. 

Let me explain at once that I have noth- 
ing in mind resembling in the least the 
communistic schemes of Fourier, Owea, 
George; of the Shakers, the Concord en- 

[36] 



WALLED TOWNS 

thusiasts or their ilk. In these cases it was 
always the unnatural element of commu- 
nism that was their undoing, and in the 
Walled Towns of the new era the preser- 
vation of individuality, of private property, 
of family integrity, would be of necessity 
a fundamental principle. Many evils and 
abuses have grown up around all these, but 
I cannot claim that I am one of those (in 
spite of its wide popularity and almost 
universal acceptance) who hold tenaciously 
to the belief that the only way to get rid of 
the dust is to burn down the house, or that 
the only way to correct a child's faults is to 
kill it. Rather I incline to the somewhat 
outworn method of reform without de- 
struction, and I lean to the opinion that 
there are enough others of like convictions 
to make possible the creation of a certain 
number of Walled Towns that the experi- 
ment may be put into effect, since mani- 
festly it is no longer possible in society as 
a whole. 

The method would be simple, the proc- 
ess carried out quietly, and preferably in 
several places at once. A certain commu- 
nity of interest must be presupposed, but 
this would hardly extend beyond substantial 

[37] 



WALLED TOWNS 

unity in religion, in philosophy and in a 
revolt against the industrial-democratic- 
imperialist scheme of society which has 
dominated Europe and America since the 
beginning of the nineteenth-century. There 
can be no sane and wholesome society in 
the future where there is not an univer- 
sally accepted religion of perfectly definite 
form, a clear, logical and convincing 
philosophy of life, and a social system 
diametrically opposed to that which was 
current before the war and is now striving 
desperately for a restoration. As the unity 
of religion has been shattered since the 
sixteenth century, the creators of the Walled 
Towns may very well be divided into in- 
dividual groups, so far as religion is con- 
cerned. I can imagine Roman Catholics 
forming the nucleus of one, Episcopalians 
another, and it may be there are among 
the Protestant denominations those who 
would be led along the same lines. The 
essential point is the fundamental necessity 
for a vital and common religion among 
those who go forward to the building of 
the new social units. The same is true of 
philosophy, for this and religion can never 
be separated except under pain of the re- 

[38] 



WALLED TOWNS 

suits that have followed the severance in 
the fifteenth century, and the workings of 
a world void of any real philosophy ever 
since. If there is any philosophy except 
sacramentalism which is at the same time 
intellectually satisfying in a perfectly 
complete degree, consonant with the 
proved results of scientific investigation 
and thought, and sufficiently dynamic as a 
controlling force in life, I am not ac- 
quainted with it. If such a thing exists, it 
might serve its turn, but false philosophies 
such as materialism, evolutionism, Christian 
Science and pragmatism are not working 
substitutes for a real philosophy such as 
that of Hugh of St. Victor, Duns Scotus 
or St. Thomas Aquinas. As for the social 
vision, there must be not only the negative 
quality of revolt but the positive quality 
of construction. It is not sufficient to hate 
the tawdry and iniquitous fabrications of 
the camp-followers of democracy; the gross 
industrial-financial system of "big busi- 
ness" and competition, with the capital 
versus labour antithesis it has bred. It is not 
enough to curse imperialism and material- 
ism and the quantitative standard. There 
must be some vision of the plausible sub- 

[39] 



WALLED TOWNS 

stitute, and while this must determine it- 
self slowly, through many failures, and 
will in "the end appear as a by-product of 
the'spiritual regeneration that must follow 
once the real religion and a right philoso- 
phy are achieved, there must be a starting 
somewhere. 

Personally, I should say that for this 
starting point we might fix on Justice 
(whichever way the sword cuts) as the first 
consideration; Charity (or rather Caritas — 
the Latin is more exact) follows close after, 
or even goes side by side. So do the other 
Cardinal Virtues; but who has not invoked 
them in support of every reform, whether 
it was of God or the devil? They fall as 
lightly from the lips of Marat or Lenine 
as from those of Plato, Dante or Sir Thomas 
More; they may be assumed. There are, 
however, certain less abstract propositions 
which it seems to me must serve at least as 
a trial basis; these, for example: 

Power is Divine in its origin, since it is 
an attribute of Divinity, and its exercise is 
by Divine permission. It follows, therefore, 
that, as was held during the Middle Ages, 
no man or group of men, neither king nor 
boss nor parliament nor soviet, has any au- 

[40] 



WALLED TOWNS 

thority to exercise power after a wrong 
fashion or to govern ill. 

Society exists through cooperation, not 
through competition; the latter must there- 
fore be abolished, though this does not 
imply the destruction of emulation, which 
is quite a different thing. 

All men are equal before God and the 
Law but not otherwise. Privilege, in the 
sense of immunity or of special opportunity 
without corresponding obligations is ab- 
horrent, but justice, self-interest and the 
common good demand that those who can 
do a thing well should do it, those who 
cannot should be debarred. This applies 
to government or legislation or the exercise 
of the electoral franchise, as well as to 
education, medicine or the arts. 

In industry of all kinds, production 
should be for use, not profit. The paying 
of money for the use of money is question- 
able, both from the standpoint of morals 
and of expediency. It may prove that the 
Church was right during the Middle Ages 
in calling it all usury, and that John Calvin, 
when he declared in its favour, was guilty 
of a crime. In any case, the return on capi- 
tal should be the fixed charge and small in 

[41] 



WALLED TOWNS 

jimount; the margin of profit belongs to 
those who produce, whether they work 
with their brains or their hands. The hold- 
ing of land for dwelling and cultivation is 
essential for every family in any wholesome 
society; this land should be sufficient to 
support the family at necessity. Land be- 
longs to the community, but tenure thereof 
on the part of families or individuals is 
perpetual, and the land may be bequeathed 
or transferred so long as the rent or taxes 
are duly paid. 

Every community is in duty bound to 
guard its own integrity by determining its 
own membership, but none once admitted 
can be expelled except by process of law. 

No society can endure when a false 
standard of comparative values exists. At 
the present time about half the working 
male population in Europe and America 
is engaged in producing or marketing things- 
which add nothing to the virtue, the real 
welfare, or the joy in life of man, and for 
the most part he would be better off without 
them. There are as many directly or in- 
directly engaged in getting rid of these 
essentially useless products as there are in 
their manufacture. None of these men 

[42] 



WALLED TOWNS 

produces anything, and they must be fed, 
housed and clothed by those who do. It 
costs as much to market the surplus product 
as it does to bring it into existence, and the 
consumer pays. The result is that " labour- 
saving" machines have vastly increased the 
burden of labour; the surplus product de- 
mands markets, and exploitation both of 
labour and of markets becomes the founda- 
tion of industrial civilization. The modern 
world has become a perfectly artificial fab- 
ric of complicated indebtedness, the magni- 
tude and ramifications of which are so enor- 
mous that nothing preserves it but public 
confidence. Were this removed, or even 
shaken seriously, the whole fabric would col- 
lapse in universal bankruptcy, a situation 
even now indicated for all Europe, as may be 
seen in Mr. Vanderlip's remarkable book 
"What has Happened to Europe." It is 
to correct this silly artifice, to obliterate this 
preposterous, wrong-headed and insecure 
way of life, that sooner or later men, women 
and children will seek refuge in the Walled 
Towns they will build, as they have gone, 
time out of mind, into the monasteries and 
convents of religion which they built for 
their earlier refuge. 

[43] 



Ill 

IN the vision that I see of the coming 
Walled Towns, they may rise any- 
where, given only that there is sufficient 
arable land near by, a river that will afford 
power, and a site with some elements of 
natural beauty. They will grow from small 
beginnings, — a few families and individuals 
at first, though the number must be sufficient 
to establish the identity and the autonomy 
of the group. The members will be those 
for whom the present type of social life is 
not good enough, either in fact or in 
promise; men and women who think alike 
on a few essential matters, who still main- 
tain the standard of comparative values of 
the world before modernism, and who wish 
to live simply, as happily as possible, and 
to restore the lost ideals of justice, honour, 
chivalry and brotherly cooperation. While 
fulfilling all their obligations to govern- 
ment as it is now established — paying taxes, 
rendering military service and jury duty, 

[44] 



WALLED TOWNS 

and voting in those occasional cases when 
there is a remote chance of its doing any 
good — they will yet set up for themselves 
a community, self-supporting in so far as 
this is possible, with its own government, 
its educational system, its social organism 
and its regulations controlling the mode of 
life of its members to the extent that is 
necessary to carry out the fundamental 
principles of the association. 

The phrase "' Walled Towns" is sym- 
bolical only; it does not imply the great 
ramparts of masonry with machicolated 
towers, moats, drawbridges and great city 
gates such as once guarded the beautiful 
cities of the Middle Ages. It might, of 
course; there is no reason why a city should 
not so protect itself from the world without, 
if its fancy led in this pictorial direction; 
and after all, anyone who has been so for- 
tunate as to live for a time in an ancient 
walled town, even under modernism, knows 
how potent is the psychological force of 
grey, guarding walls, with the little city 
within, and beyond the gates not only the 
fields and orchards and vineyards as they 
were in the old days, but also, and kept 
aloof by the ancient walls, the railways 

[45] 



WALLED TOWNS 

and factories of an inclement modernism. 
No, the adjective is symbolical merely, 
and indicates the fact that around these 
communities there is drawn a definite in- 
hibition that absolutely cuts off from the 
town itself and "all they that dwell therein" 
those things from the assault of which 
refuge has been sought. I could easily 
imagine that these inhibitions might vary 
more or less as between one Walled Town 
and another, although certain general 
principles would be preserved everywhere, 
since these would be implied in the very 
movement itself. 

Here are certain examples of what I 
mean. The antithesis between capital and 
labour would be impossible. Some form of 
a restored guild system would be the only 
workable basis. Production would be 
normally for use, not profit; and advertis- 
ing or exploitation of any kind, or any 
other form of "creating markets," would 
be rigidly tabooed. Every family would 
hold land sufficient for its own maintenance 
so far as possible farm and garden products 
are concerned. Certain large, expensive 
machines, by their nature not always in use, 
would be owned by the community, while 

[46] 



WALLED TOWNS 

the transportation of surplus produce to 
outside markets, the maintenance of a dairy 
and a canning plant, possibly also a mill and 
bakery, would be communally undertaken. 
As joyful living through that simplicity 
which follows from the elimination of 
unwholesome desires is a fundamental prin- 
ciple, it follows that in every case there 
would be a revival of the old principle of 
sumptuary laws, certain things being ex- 
cluded as vicious in themselves, others as 
poisoning in their influence. Of course 
there is great danger here, since there is 
the constant menace of a pernicious in- 
fringement on that personal liberty which 
is an essential of all right living. The fact 
is incontestable, however, that our present 
intolerable social condition which seems to 
focus at one point in the "high cost of 
living" is due to two things: first, the mul- 
tiplication during the last forty years of an 
incalculable number of foolish luxuries 
and "amenities of life" we were far hap- 
pier without, but which now through fa- 
miliarity we look on as indispensable; 
second, the fact I already have referred to 
that more than half the labour expended 
today goes to produce utterly useless, 

[47] 



WALLED TOWNS 

grossly ugly, or vitiatingly luxurious com- 
modities, while half the cost of this ridicu- 
lous mass of superfluities goes to the tout, 
the drummer, the tradesman and the adver- 
tiser. In some way the balance must be 
restored, and this can be accomplished 
partly by regulations formally set forth, 
partly by the moral force of a better type 
of life actually put in process and exerting 
its silent influence over the people them- 
selves. To a great extent it would be a case 
of "local option" extended to more than 
the question of drink. It would be neither 
useful nor wise (indeed it might be action- 
able) for me to attempt a list of the things 
we should be better off without. Each one 
can make his list to suit himself, and he will 
be surprised, if he deals with the question 
frankly, at the length of the schedule. 

There is no way in which life can be 
brought back to a sane and wholesome and 
noble basis except through the recovery of 
a right religion and a right philosophy, 
the establishing of a new industrial and 
commercial system as radically opposed to 
the insanities of Bolshevism as it is to the 
sinister efficiency of the capitalist-prole- 
tarian regime, and by the elimination of 

[48] 



WALLED TOWNS 

the useless and crushing impedimenta that 
have been heaped upon us by "labour- 
saving" machines, the craft and ingenuity 
of misguided inventors, and the monumental 
ability of the system of advertising. Within 
the deadly coil of life as it is now irrevocably 
fixed by the society of today, there is no 
possibility of escape (barring the threatened 
success of Marxian socialism as this has 
taken shape in internationalism and Bol- 
shevism), for the individual is helpless, 
bound hand and foot by the forces of cus- 
tom, public opinion, lethargy and luxury, 
and by what Dr. Jacks so well calls " the 
tyranny of mere things." So the real men 
felt in the time of St. Benedict, and of St. 
Odo of Cluny and St. Robert of Molesmes, 
of St. Norbert and St. Francis and St. 
Dominic and St. Bruno. They left the 
world in order that they might regain it, 
even though their eyes were fixed on a 
heavenly country. For themselves and their 
followers they gained a better type of life 
than the world could then offer, and their 
deeds lived after them in centuries of a 
regenerated life. 

It is our habit of mind to think of the 
period of decline and catastrophe that in- 

[49] 



WALLED TOWNS 

tervenes between one era and the next as 
something awful and ominous, when the 
whole world realizes the horror of change 
and is sunk in black despair. In this we 
are undoubtedly as wrong as we are in the 
case of our interpretation of history. St. 
Augustine and St Jerome saw the signifi 
cance of the fall of the Roman Empire, but 
such other documentary evidence as exist 
would indicate that the Romans as a whole 
took it much as a matter of course, with 
little sense of the vastness of the catastro- 
phe and the plenitude of the humiliation. 
In the ninth century men were so steeped in 
the universal sin and corruption they ceased 
to retain any perspective whatever. Very 
likely while Marozia and her clan were 
turning Rome and the Church into a moi 
strous offence against decency, the gen 
public, as well as the world-wide corr 
ing influences themselves, thought that their 
"civilization" was really not so bad after 
all. The same is true of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries, when the beginnings of 
the Renaissance dazzled man's eyes to the 
tragedy of the ending of Medievalism and 
the fast growing profligacy in act and 
thought. We ourselves are in similar case. 

[50] 



WALLED TOWNS 

We are so near the events that are bringing 
modernism to an end that we can estimate 
them not at all in their true nature. Read 
any newspaper of today, talk with any 
" practical business man," or indeed almost 
any clergyman, educator or professed 
" philosopher," and you will find the atti- 
tude of mind that looks on the war and the 
current beginnings of social revolution as 
untoward episodes, the insane creations of 
froward men, that only need time and 
patience for the crushing, to permit the 
world to go on again just as before, only 
faster and more gloriously, towards the 
iridescent apotheosis of democratic poli- 
tics, imperial business, scientific acquisi- 
tion, and the reign of reason. The incubus 
of the thing-that-is cannot be shifted and, 
as so many times before, it is only ruth- 
less catastrophe that can bring it to an 
end. 

Similarly we do not realize how new a 
thing is this tyranny of the material prod- 
uct, this obsession of the machine and the 
things it produces, the ideas and habits and 
superstitions it generates. I am not so old 
a man, as lives run, but I can still remember 
the old patriarchal life of the New England 

[5i] 



WALLED TOWNS 

countryside before the juggernaut that 
crushed wholesome society and sane living 
had begun its fatal course. In the year 1880, 
when I first knew a great city, there were 
only three forces then in operation which 
differentiated its growth that had not 
existed in the time of Caesar — steam as 
power, the electric telegraph and the ele- 
vator, the last a novelty of less than ten years' 
existence. The great forces that were to 
transform society had been in existence for 
varying periods: some from the Renais- 
sance, some from the Reformation, some 
from the Civil Wars in England, some from 
the French Revolution, some from the 
mechanical discoveries between 1767 and 
1830, some from our own Civil War. It 
is not until the latter date, however, that 
they became fully operative; and the in- 
cubus we would now remove, if we could, 
and if we fully realized its nature, is actu- 
ally the creation of the last fifty years. 

I have said above that I clearly remember 
the old regime as it stood at the opening of 
this fifty-year period of monstrous aggrega- 
tion, exaggeration and acceleration, and 
this memory, together with some thirty 
years of study of Mediaeval civilization, 

[52] 



WALLED TOWNS 

has much to do with the conviction that 
man cannot be free or sane or reasonably 
happy until he forcibly tears himself (or 
forcibly is torn) from the deadly evil of 
modernism in which he is enmeshed. The 
positive memory may help to show some- 
thing of that to which I conceive we must 
return. 

In the year 1870 my grandfather's place 
was to all intents and purposes what it had 
been since the first portion of the old house 
was built during the reign of William and 
Mary. He was " The Squire " in his family 
and over the community, as his fathers had 
been before him for two centuries. If wills 
were to be drawn, land surveyed, property 
transferred, family quarrels adjusted, the 
duty fell upon him. From a material point 
of view the house and the farm and the way 
of life were as they had been. There was, 
I think, a mechanical corn-sheller, but I 
remember no other new-fangled mechani- 
cal device. The wheat for flour was grown 
on the place and ground at a near-by mill. 
Until but a few years before, the wool and 
flax for clothing and linen were also of 
home production, while the great loom was 
still in its place in the dim attic with its 

[53] 



WALLED TOWNS 

odour of thyme and beeswax. In addition 
to all the necessary fruits and vegetables, 
all the butter, cheese, bacon, hams came 
from the estate. So of course did the honey 
and the metheglyn, or honey-wine as you 
read of it in Chaucer, which, I verily be- 
lieve, was made there last of all places in 
the world. To a great extent the life was 
still communal. For mowing, planting, 
havesting, shearing, husking, the farmers 
came together to work in common, while 
the disability of one brought the others 
together to do his work. Communal also 
in a sense was the household. Many a time 
have I awakened as a boy, between lavender- 
scented homespun sheets, and beneath a 
wonderful woven coverlet, to dress in the 
early dawn and go down to the long kitchen 
with its eight-foot fireplace, to find all the 
feminine portion of the household preparing 
such a breakfast as the present day cannot 
afford ; and later I have watched the neigh- 
bors gathered in the "east room" ingeniously 
" drawing in " rugs and mats of marvellous 
(if not strictly artistic) design and colour. 
As was the custom in that country, the house 
was double, the eldest son occupying the 
new wing until in time he removed to the 

[54] 



WALLED TOWNS 

old part and his son in turn took the new. 
It was a place of tradition, of immemorial 
custom, of self-respecting because arduous 
life, and every inch of ancient house, of vast 
and rambling barns, even of the fields and 
pastures, gardens and orchards and wood- 
land, was redolent of old history, of per- 
manence, of stability, of dignity and of a 
vivid liberty. 

Here was no telephone, no automobile, 
no elaborate collection of complicated and 
costly machines, no flood of cheap news- 
papers, magazines or other " literature," no 
weekly expedition to the "movies," no 
ready-made clothes that must be constantly 
replaced or that annually went out of 
fashion, no pianola or graphophone, no 
" art-furniture," no candy and cheap drinks 
and fruit out-of-season. Neither was there 
any labour problem, or strikes or poverty 
or high-cost-of-living. 

"A hard life" ? Yes, in a way, but its 
hardness was more than balanced by what 
it gave : self-respect, liberty, freedom from 
the tyranny and oppression of outside 
forces; above all, character, and of a 
strength and simplicity and fineness it 
would be hard to match today. I do not 

[55] 



WALLED TOWNS 

doubt that country and village life as it was 
then in the North, and had been in the 
South until ten years before (not as it had 
become in another twenty years when the 
new forces had begun to seep in), was more 
productive of real happiness and of sterling 
character than has been any form of life 
that has developed since. 

Of course there was the other side to the 
case. Life then, good as it was, lacked some 
of the qualities that existed in the Middle 
Ages, the loss of which was a serious handi- 
cap. There was a hard and unlovely re- 
ligion, the arts had wholly disappeared, and 
the exquisite environment man had always 
made for himself had vanished from life. 
The stimulus and the vital communal sense 
of the old guilds, the games, the merrymak- 
ing, the living religious practices, had 
faded into a colder and more austere neigh- 
bourliness. The comradeship of pilgrim- 
age and common adventure and " church 
ales " had vanished utterly, and in everyway 
life was becoming more drab and colour- 
less. Much remained, however, though in 
a vanishing estate, of the clean and simple 
and wholesome life of a dead past, and in 
comparison with the common life of today, 

[56] 



WALLED TOWNS 

on the farm, in the factory, in village or 
great city, it must commend itself in such 
degree that many sacrifices are worth while 
if we can win it back. Win it back, but not 
as it stood then. Out of a farther past must 
come many things to enrich its content and 
make more beautiful its condition. Out of 
the present must come much also. An ar- 
chaeological or artificial restoration would 
be as undesirable as it is impossible. What 
modernism has given — or sold — that is in 
itself good, must be retained, and this is 
much. The trouble is the good is so intri- 
cately mixed with the bad that the untan- 
gling seems almost hopeless. Since our 
standard of comparative values is so dis- 
torted we have no sound basis from which 
we can set to work. Only through the 
process of what is really a new spiritual 
enlightenment, manifesting itself through 
both religion and philosophy, can the task 
be accomplished, for no ingenious engine, 
no clever device, no political panacea will 
prove even of temporary value. Probably 
the control of this spiritual stimulus is out 
of our hands; it usually is, being granted 
to men at times, at other times withheld. 
While we await the issue we can at least try 

[57] 



WALLED TOWNS 



humbly, and perhaps doubtfully, if we can- 
not take the first steps towards earning the 
indispensable boon, and it may be the first 
step will be into Walled Towns. 



[58] 



IV 

BEAULIEU is a Walled Town and it lies 
about forty miles from one of the 
largest cities of New England. The 
forty-mile road is in all things about what 
such a road is today; the same industrial 
suburbs, with the further fringe of slate- 
grey tenements in their dreary and dirty 
yards, then the subsidiary towns of dull or 
flamboyant cottages, barren railway sta- 
tions, third-rate shops, harsh factories, each 
separated from the next by marshes or bar- 
rens where refuse is dumped, and specula- 
tive roads and house-lots cry their unsavoury 
wares. Little by little decent residences 
crop up and so the ring of reasonable 
opulence is reached, — now as then good so 
far as nature is let alone, bad where the 
architect) and landscapist and gardener 
exercise their ingenuity. Farms follow, 
and pasture and woodland, unkempt but 
inoffensive, sometimes even beautiful when 
the hand of man has been withheld. Three 

[59] 



WALLED TOWNS 

or four ambitious and growing towns break 
the good country, each contributing of its 
own in the shape of mills, slums, wastes, 
commercial architecture, gaudy signs, 
hurry, noise, dust and bad smells. After the 
last there is an interval of comparative quiet 
and decency while the road runs through 
a respectable forest, rising as it enters 
among low hills, with a glimpse of water 
here and there, a small lake, a brook, and at 
last a fairly wide view. 

On the bridge the view changes. There is 
something different in the lands beyond, 
though the difference is at first intangible. 
It is farming land for some two or three 
miles in front and reaching in a wide sweep 
right and left, while beyond the land rises 
swiftly with a rather thick growth of large 
trees above which lift two or three grey 
stone towers, and a silvery spire, very deli- 
cate and lofty; a view that might be in any 
English county or in France or the Rhine- 
land. The farms are evidently under high 
cultivation, divided into rather small fields 
by hedgerows marked by an unusual num- 
ber of well-kept trees. There are few farm- 
houses but many large barns of stone some- 
what suggesting those of western Pennsyl- 
[60] 



WALLED TOWNS 

vania. Such houses as there are, are also of 
stone in great part, with brick here and 
there and considerable white plaster. The 
well-built road is, as before, crowded with 
motor vehicles, but two things have wholly 
ceased at the river — advertising signs and 
smoking factory chimney; as far as the eye 
can see neither is visible. 

The zone of farms is quickly passed and 
then comes a space of orchards and vine- 
yards; the highway divides, one branch to 
the right, another to the left, and at the 
fork stands a stone shrine with the figure of 
St. Christopher; practically all the motors 
go to the right, but we take the road to the 
left, which curves sharply after a few hun- 
dred yards, crosses a stone bridge of a single 
arch over a narrow but swift river, and is in- 
tercepted by a long, irregular mass of stone 
buildings with many mullioned windows, 
and a lofty tower something like that of 
St. John's College in Cambridge, with a 
broad, high, pointed arch, and a chain 
reaching from side to side, blocking the way 
to all wheeled traffic. This is the Bar Gate 
of the Walled Town of Beaulieu, and here 
all automobiles must stop, for they are not 
permitted within the town. There is a good 

[61] 



WALLED TOWNS 

garage on one side ; a sort of inn and a livery 
stable on the other, where one may hire a 
carriage or saddle horses, which alone are 
allowed inside the gates. 

The rambling grey-stone building, which 
in parts rises sheer from the river's edge and 
is not unlike Warwick Castle, serves many 
purposes. The octroi is strict and all goods 
brought into the town for sale must pay a 
varying ad valorem tax, while the " liberty 
of the town" is granted to outsiders only 
on payment of a small fee. No one can sell 
in the town without a license, while some 
things are wholly prohibited, such, for ex- 
ample, as those things that would compete 
with native products, whether of food-stuffs, 
manufacture or artisanship, and those ar- 
ticles which the town has prohibited as 
deleterious or as "useless luxuries. " A 
bailiff and council of three sit here in a fine 
stone-vaulted room opening off the great 
gate, for three hours each morning, to issue 
their licenses or prohibitions. Here also are 
the town telephones and telegraphs, for 
while these as well as motor cars are recog- 
nized as necessities on emergency occasions, 
they are held to be "useless luxuries" as 
private possessions and are forbidden within 
[62] 



WALLED TOWNS 

the walls. There is nothing to prevent 
a townsman owning and using a motor 
car or private telephone beyond the town 
walls, if he likes, though this is looked on 
with disfavour, and as a matter of fact is 
unusual. In the early days of this, as of 
all Walled Towns, and to some extent 
thereafter, those who became townsmen con- 
tinued their business or professions " in the 
world outside the walls," that is to say in 
some neighboring city, and the jurisdiction 
of the Walled Town did not extend beyond 
its own precincts and lands. Usually in a 
few years' time these men adapted them- 
selves to the town life and law, giving up 
their outside interests and becoming " Bur- 
gesses of the Free City" with their interests 
and material activities concentrated within 
its limits. Conduct of government is wholly 
within the hands of these burgesses. As for 
the town telephones and motor cars, their 
use is free to all townsmen in cases of illness 
or other recognized emergency. 

Over the gate-tower floats the big banner 
of the town, above the arch is its coat of 
arms emblazoned in colour and gold, and 
within the gate are always two halberdiers 
on guard. This is not affectation or a wilful 

[63] 



WALLED TOWNS 

medievalism, but because all the Walled 
Towns know the value of symbolism and 
use it universally and intelligently. All 
civic ceremonials, indeed all the common 
acts of the town officials, are carried out 
w T ith much show and dignity and magnifi- 
cence. There are fine robes of office, precise 
etiquette, elaborate functions; nothing is 
done casually or haphazard, but with dig- 
nity, beauty and a real pride in the nobility 
of the communal life. Long before the 
founding of the first Walled Town it was 
generally known that the depravity, or at 
least the incompetence, that had become 
chronic in civic life, was partially due 
to the false " democracy" which had shorn 
it of every vestige of dignity, of ceremonial, 
of difference from the common affairs of 
business life, and the potency of symbolism 
was one of the original elements in the great 
revolution which brought the Walled 
Towns into existence. 

Passing now under the great echoing 
vault of the Bar Gate, we come at once into 
the town itself. There is first of all a small 
square or market-place with rather thickly 
set, stone-built and gabled house, with 
glimpses between, and through occasional 

[6 4 ] 



WALLED TOWNS 

archways, into gardens behind. On one 
side is the Exchange, a considerable build- 
ing with an open arcade along its front; it 
is here that the surplus products of the town 
are sold — grain and farm produce, cloth, 
or whatever it may be that is paid through 
the tax in kind or placed in the hands of 
the Exchange officials for sale outside the 
community. The main street leads from 
the square and curves up a slight grade. 
Here the houses are well separated, with 
garden walls between, sometimes pierced by 
grated openings that give more glimpses 
of gardens around and behind. As in the 
old days, these houses are mostly workshops 
and salesrooms as well as residences, for 
this is the street of craftsmen of all sorts — 
workers in metals, wood, leather; potters, 
embroiderers, tailors; carvers in stone, 
painters, makers of musical instruments. 
Every craft and art that is needed by the 
townspeople is found here, for one of the 
foundation stones of the Walled Towns is 
self-sufficiency; that is to say, everything 
ordinarily needful is produced by the town 
for the town, the necessities that cannot be 
furnished because of physical and climatic 
difficulties being reduced to the smallest 

[65] 



WALLED TOWNS 

number. Coffee and tea, a few spices, trop- 
ical fruits, rice, tobacco, cotton, silk and 
certain wines are beyond the contriving of 
a Walled Town in the north temperate zone 
and must be imported; but this is done by 
town officials, who are paid salaries, and 
the goods are resold at a standard advance 
on the wholesale cost. Everything that is 
possible is produced within the town itself, 
and either by individual craftsmen or, 
where bulk products are necessary, in the 
workshops maintained by the community 
under the charge of a special and salaried 
group of officials. 

The specialization and localizing of in- 
dustries and the division of labour were two 
of the causes of industrial civilization — 
and still are in " the world without." That 
one town or district should be given over 
to the weaving of cotton or the spinning of 
wool ; that shoes should chiefly be produced 
in Lynn, furniture in Grand Rapids, glass 
in Pittsburgh, beer in Milwaukee, hams in 
Chicago; that from all over a vast district 
the raw material of manufacture should be 
transported for hundreds, perhaps thou- 
sands of miles, to various howling wilder- 
nesses of highly specialized factories, only to 
[66] 



WALLED TOWNS 

be shipped back again after fabrication to be 
used or consumed by many of the original 
producers, was and is one of the prepos- 
terous absurdities of an industrial system 
supported on some of the most appalling 
sophistry that ever issued out of the Adulla- 
mite caves of political economy. 

In the Walled Towns all this is changed. 
In the first place no man is a free burgess 
unless he is a land-holder, and the minimum 
is garden land sufficient to supply all the 
needs of his family that can be satisfied 
from this source; the maximum is that 
amount of farm land that he can maintain 
at a minimum standard of productivity. So 
far as I know every family also keeps as 
many cows and poultry as will furnish the 
normal requirements in the shape of dairy 
products, eggs, and fowl for eating. The 
farms, which lie outside the walls and quite 
surround the town, do more than this, and 
much produce finds its way to the com- 
munal dairy, which is used for the 
production of butter and cheese for the 
townspeople, and also for sale outside the 
walls. As each town has its own special 
products, maintained always at the highest 
standard, the market never fails. 

[67] 



WALLED TOWNS 

In the matter of cloth and clothing, wool 
and flax are grown both by individuals and 
by the community, and the spinning and 
weaving are done in the town mills. These 
are built and equipped at the common 
charge and managed by officials who serve 
for fixed salaries. A certain percentage 
on the value of all raw material brought in 
for working up into the finished product 
is assessed on the owner, and this may be 
paid in cash or in kind. No raw material 
is ever acquired from outside the commu- 
nity; all internal surplus is purchased and 
made up into cloth, which is sold first to any 
townspeople who wish to buy, or second to 
outside purchasers, the profits going to de- 
fray the running expenses. As a matter of 
fact, there is always a large surplus of wool 
and flax over and above the normal needs 
of each producer, and the mills not only run 
at a profit but pay well on the original in- 
vestment. In these mills highly perfected 
machinery is used, for while the Walled 
Towns were formed partly for the elimina- 
tion, so far as possible, of machines in the 
affairs of life, it is realized that they may 
be used as actual labour-savers, and without 
serious injury to the workman, where they 
[68] 



WALLED TOWNS 

are employed on bulk-production such as 
cloth, and where the element of competition 
is eliminated. Since in manufacture of this 
kind division of labour is unavoidable and 
the work is mechanical and akin to drudgery, 
the wages paid are high, while the hours 
of employment never exceed thirty a week. 
Practically all the employees are able to 
take care of their own gardens and many 
have small farms as well. During the seed- 
time and harvest periods the mills are shut 
down. When it happens (as it often does) 
that a mill shows a profit, all in excess of 
three per cent on the value of the plant is 
divided between the employees and the 
clerical force, for one of the established 
laws of all Walled Towns is that capital is 
entitled only to a fixed return, the surplus 
belonging to the labour, both mental and 
physical, that produces the results. Stock 
companies as such are strictly prohibited 
and it is unlawful to pay money for the use 
of money furnished by inactive investors. 
The mills are of course not large; they are 
pleasantly situated, not without architectu- 
ral quality, and they are always run either by 
water-power or by electricity hydraulically 
generated. Steam is not used in any case. 

[69] 



WALLED TOWNS 

The restoration of real crafts has resulted 
in reducing the use of machinery to the 
lowest terms. Handicraft has been re- 
stored, in wood, metals, all fancy weaving, 
glass making, pottery, leather-work, and 
to a certain extent in printing, not only be- 
cause the results are in every way finer and 
more durable, but because labour so em- 
ployed is intelligent, mentally stimulating 
and physically satisfying, while by so much 
the production of coal, the mining, smelting 
and forging of iron ore, and the fabricating 
of articles of iron and steel are reduced. 
The Walled Towns hold that such labour 
is mentally stultifying if not actually de- 
grading, and it is with them a point of 
morals that they should make it necessary 
to the smallest degree possible. 

The main street leads into the central 
square of the town, a spacious open place of 
great dignity and beauty, surrounded by 
admirable buildings of public character, 
where the simplicity of the houses and 
shops gives place to considerable richness 
both in design and in colour. On one side 
is the parish church, in this particular case 
not unlike St. Cuthbert's, Wells, only half 
hidden by fine trees and surrounded by a 

[70] 



WALLED TOWNS 

green and shady churchyard. On another 
side is the Town Hall, also with a lofty 
tower flying the great flag of the city, while 
the other sides of the square are filled with 
the rich facades of the Guild Halls. Open- 
ing out of this central square is the Market 
Place, entered through a noble archway 
between two of the Guild Halls, and in this 
square is the Market House and several 
more Guild Halls. Opposite, a street con- 
nects after some few hundred feet with a 
third open place, in this case a pleasure gar- 
den, and here are the theatre, the concert 
hall, the public baths, the principal inn and 
several cafes and shops, the latter being 
more especially devoted to those things 
which are associated with the lighter side 
of life. 

Beyond the immediate vicinity of these 
squares come the dwelling-places, each a 
separate house with a garden never less than 
an acre in extent. No multiple houses of 
any sort are permitted and each family must 
maintain a separate house and garden. The 
roads here wind pleasantly and are well 
shaded by trees; niched statues, both secular 
and religious, and shrines, are quite com- 
mon. Here also are the several conventual 

[71] 



WALLED TOWNS 

establishments belonging to various orders, 
and varying much as between one town and 
another, but there is always a house for men 
and one for women. In the particular town 
we are considering, the chief monastic in- 
stitution is Benedictine, and it stands on 
higher land than the rest of the town and 
is a true abbey both in size and in its official 
status. There is also a house of Dominican 
Sisters and one of Canons Regular of St. 
Augustine. Where the land begins to drop 
down again towards the river as it curves 
around on the side of the town opposite 
that at which we entered, is the college, 
with very spacious grounds, groves and 
gardens, the whole commanding a wide 
view out across the zone of farms and so to 
the low hills on the horizon to the west. 

Let us now retrace our steps to the group 
of squares and see something of the signifi- 
cance of the various buildings and the part 
they play in the life of the Walled Town. 
We will interrogate some citizen in each 
case who can best explain that portion of 
the polity with which he is associated. The 
first shall be the parish priest, and he shall 
talk to us as we sit in the lych-gate with the 
silvery grey church behind, and in front the 

[72] 



WALLED TOWNS 

square where people are constantly passing 
back and forth, — not the dull, drab throng 
of men in ugly " sack-suits" and "derby" 
hats of the cities of the outer world, and 
women in fantastic finery or sordid, sad- 
coloured gowns, but a self-respecting people 
with some sense of beauty and a manifest 
delight in colour. 

" There is," says the parson, " as you will 
see, only one parish church, though as the 
town has grown other chapels have been 
added in other quarters, each of which is 
under a vicar who is one of the general body 
of parish clergy. The whole town forms 
one parish and the whole body of parochial 
clergy sit together to deal with the spiritual 
affairs of the town, while all the free 
burgesses meet in common to deal with 
the temporal interests of the parish. No, 
there are no denominational divisions. 
Each town as it is founded is made up only 
of those of the same religious convictions, 
and thereafter none is added who is not of 
the same belief. Denominationalism is in- 
consistent with unity of action, cooperation 
and true democracy, and however much the 
laws and customs of the Walled Towns may 
vary (and there is no little diversity) in 

[73] 



WALLED TOWNS 

this there is complete unanimity. No one 
is of course constrained to go to church or 
accept the ministrations of the clergy, al- 
though refusal is practically unheard of. 
There have been cases of those who have 
lost their faith, but sooner or later this 
means their withdrawal from the town it- 
self. The parish church is actually the 
centre of spiritual life of the community. 
Its services are very numerous, particularly 
on Sundays and holy days, and it is, as you 
have seen, a sort of synthesis of all the arts 
raised to the highest attainable level. Each 
guild has either its own chapel or altar, and 
once a year it holds a great service at which 
its members are bound to be present. 

"The relationship between the Church 
and civic life is, I suppose, about what it was 
before the Reformation. Religion enters 
into all the affairs of life as it did then, and 
the visible manifestations are pretty much 
the same. You will have noticed the many 
shrines and statues in all parts of the town, 
and you can also see within a few days' time 
one of the many festival processions through 
the streets. In the Walled Towns religion 
is not a hidden thing, nor is it segregated 
in a few places and confined to one day in 

[74] 



WALLED TOWNS 

the week. In the world outside the wails, 
where the old sectarian divisions still con- 
tinue, this realization of religion would be 
impossible ; but within the walls, because of 
the unanimity of conviction on the part of 
those that are drawn to any particular town, 
it is not only possible but inevitable." 

We cross the square and enter the Town 
Hall with its shady arcades and its painted 
and gilded statues like those on the Hotel 
de Ville of Bourges. We go up a broad 
stone stairway and enter the anteroom of the 
Provost, who is the head of the government. 
The room has fine tapestries on the walls, 
with much well-carved furniture, and the 
guards and ushers suggest neither by their 
costumes nor their manners the familiar 
police officers on duty in the ordinary city 
hall. The building and the officials and the 
grave and rather stately ceremonial all 
convey the impression that a Walled Town 
is both a City State and a Free State, and 
that its formal and personal expression is 
a matter of dignity, reverence and self- 
respect. Once, not long ago, being in a 
large city of the North-West, I was in- 
vited to address the Mayor and Aldermen 
on certain matters pertaining to that depart- 

[75] 



WALLED TOWNS 

ment of my own city government of which 
I happened to be the head. The corridors 
were crowded with dirty or sinister loafers 
interspersed with burly policemen. There 
were spitoons everywhere which served 
only a part of their purpose. The Mayor's 
reception room was not unhandsome, but it 
was full of knots of whispering and sly-eyed 
political hangers-on, reporters, and more 
loafers, while the air was rank with tobacco- 
smoke. Presently the Mayor and Alder- 
men strolled in, hailing various individuals 
by nicknames and slang phrases, and dis- 
posed themselves at ease around a long 
table; some were in their shirt-sleeves, for 
it was a hot midsummer day. I was listened 
to politely enough, and the questions asked 
were not unintelligent; it was the attitude, 
the form, that was at fault. The whole 
thing was more like a social meeting of 
commercial travellers in the office of a 
country hotel than a session of the govern- 
ing body of a great city. 

After this digression let us return to our 
Walled Town. From the anteroom we are 
conducted to the state reception room, and 
here we are received by the Provost in his 
long, furred gown and his gold chain of 

[76] 



WALLED TOWNS 

office. He is an old man, grey-bearded, 
and his courtly manners indicate at once 
his breeding, his self-respect and his sense of 
the dignity and significance of his position. 
From him we learn that only land-holders 
are burgesses of the town and that no others 
possess a vote or may hold office; the dis- 
tinction is less invidious than it might ap- 
pear, for land-holding is so fundamental a 
principle in the Walled Towns that there 
are almost none who cannot qualify. Gov- 
ernment is in the hands of the Provost and 
Council, with a small group of department 
heads who with the Provost form the exec- 
utive. Any hundred burgesses may unite for 
the purpose of choosing one of their num- 
ber to the Council, and as this particular 
town contains about three thousand bur- 
gesses the Council consists of thirty men who 
are chosen annually, while the Provost, who 
is elected by the Council, holds office for ten 
years. There would appear to be very little 
legislation; each year the Provost presents, 
with the financial budget, a programme of 
legislation, and until this is disposed of, 
private legislative bills may not be con- 
sidered. A further guard against the uni- 
versal curse of democracy, reckless and 

[77] 



WALLED TOWNS 

ill-digested legislation initiated by single in- 
dividuals, is the provision that any private 
bill must be indorsed by one fifth of all the 
Councillors before it can be introduced. 

Taxation is almost wholly in the form of 
rent of land, and here the scale is fixed from 
the moment the land is taken over, while it 
varies as between arable land, forest, or- 
chard, pasture, garden and " tenement," i. e. 
land on which is a dwelling. If through 
his own industry a land-holder improves 
any portion of his holding, he receives a 
rebate on his taxes; if he allows any land 
to degenerate, his tax is increased. The tax 
revenue is supplemented by various fees, 
small in amount and not numerous, and by 
the " gate tax " imposed on those from out- 
side who are admitted to buy or sell within 
the walls. Public indebtedness is prohibited 
by law, the revenue must always meet the 
annual expenditure, and no bonds secured 
by public credit may be issued. 

The Walled Towns have definitely aban- 
doned the nineteenth century theory that the 
vote is a "natural right." As said before, this 
privilege is exercised only by land-holders 
(the great majority of citizens) but it may be 
withdrawn for long or short periods and 

[78] 



WALLED TOWNS 

for reasons specified in the charter. Any 
man found guilty of a crime or misde- 
meanour forfeits the franchise, and for peri- 
ods varying from one year to life, dependent 
on the gravity of the offence. The burgesses 
vote only through their "hundreds" and 
solely for the choosing of Councillors, but 
the election of a Provost must be confirmed 
by a mass-meeting of all burgesses, and any 
change in the charter must be submitted 
for the same approval. 

The Law Courts of a Walled Town offer 
many points of difference to those of " the 
world without." In the first place, it is a 
fundamental principle that the object of 
a Court of Law is the administering of 
justice, the defence of right, and the pun- 
ishment of wrong. An appeal to technicali- 
ties is therefore prohibited, and any advocate 
who makes such an appeal is promptly dis- 
barred. Normally all cases are tried and 
determined by a bench of judges, though 
in certain cases the plaintiff or defendant 
may demand a jury trial. Of course all 
Judges are appointed by the Provost for 
life. In addition to the regular municipal 
courts there is a Court of Conciliation. 
Under the oath of each citizen to obey and 

[79] 



WALLED TOWNS 

support the charter, every case must be 
taken to the Court of Conciliation before 
recourse is had to the regular courts of law, 
the result being that very few cases fail of 
adjustment without formal legal process. 
The Law Courts themselves are housed in 
a building of a degree of beauty unusual 
even in a Walled Town where ugliness is 
unknown, while the form and ceremony 
reach the final height of grave majesty. 

Let us now visit one of the guild halls, 
for it is in the guild that we may find the 
root of the entire economic system which 
so sharply differentiates society within the 
walls from that without. We may take any 
one of the half-dozen or more, for all are 
practically the same except in the design of 
their buildings and the decoration, the 
liveries of the members and officials, and 
the guild banner. 

All society is organized under the guild 
system, and every man must be a registered 
member of one guild or another. The 
guild of the farmers is the largest, and usu- 
ally it is to this that those citizens belong 
who are officials or professional men. Then 
there are guilds of metal-workers of all 
kinds, cloth-makers, builders, artists, etc. 
[80] 



, WALLED TOWNS 

When a Walled Town is founded with 
small numbers the list of guilds is very 
small, but as the town increases so do the 
guilds, and the different industries organ- 
ize their own groups. A guild is an arti- 
ficial family made up of all those of a 
common interest. Its objects are: human 
fellowship, cooperation, mutual aid in ill- 
ness or misfortune, the maintaining of the 
highest standard in the product of all its 
members, prevention of inordinate profits, 
regulation of the relationship between 
masters, journeymen and apprentices, the 
standardizing of wages and profits, craft 
training and education, the maintenance 
of and common participation in religious 
services, and finally the purchase of raw 
materials and the ownership and mainte- 
nance of large and costly machinery in the 
few cases where that is employed. 

In the Walled Town the division between 
capital and labour does not and can not 
exist. Since production is for use, not 
profit, since competition is impossible under 
the guild system, and since no advertising 
is permitted beyond a sign-board (and they 
are sometimes most notable works of art, 
these painted and gilded and carven signs), 

[81] 



WALLED TOWNS 

exploitation, whether of labour or markets, 
is unknown. One of the fundamental points 
in the town charters is the definite prohibi- 
tion of the "unearned increment." Money 
may not be taken or paid for the use of 
money, except within each guild, and here 
only under what are practically emergency 
conditions, the rate of interest never exceed- 
ing three per cent. Every guild has its own 
fund, made up from dues, bequests, and a 
percentage of profits on the sale by the guild 
of such surplus products as may be handed 
over to its officers for disposal ; but this fund 
cannot be invested at interest outside the 
walls nor is any portion available for other 
than guild members, except that the town 
may use it for current expenses in anticipa- 
tion of the regular land-taxes (or rent) , pay- 
ing three per cent therefor, and returning it 
within the space of a year. The system is 
practically a restoration of the guild system 
of the Middle Ages, and any one may find 
for himself further details by referring to 
the many books on the subject; e. g. those of 
William Morris, Arthur Penty and Prince 
Kropotkin. It is the precise antithesis of 
collectivism, socialism and trades-unionism 
of whatever form. 

[82] 



WALLED TOWNS 

Within the Walled Towns the educa- 
tional system shows few points of resem- 
blance to the standards and methods still 
pursued outside. It is universally recog- 
nized that the prime object of all education 
is the development of inherent character, 
and for this reason it is never divorced 
from religion; the idea of a rigidly secu- 
larized education is abhorrent, and the 
dwellers in the Walled Towns rightly at- 
tribute to its prevalence in the nineteenth 
century much of the retrogression in char- 
acter, the loss of sound standards of value, 
and the disappearance of leadership which 
synchronized with the Itwentieth century 
break-down of civilization even if it were 
not indeed its primary cause. Neither 
is there any false estimate of the possibilities 
of education; it is held that while it can 
measurably develop qualities latent in the 
child by reason of its racial impulse, it can- 
not put in what is not there already. The 
old superstition that education and environ- 
ment were omnipotent, and that they were 
the safeguards as well as the justification 
of democracy, since given an identical en- 
vironment and equal educational oppor- 
tunities an hundred children of as many 

[83] 



WALLED TOWNS 

classes, races and antecedents would turn 
out equal as potential members of a free 
society, has long since been abandoned. It 
is impossible to enter into this question at 
length, but the chief points are these. 

Education is not compulsory, but parents 
are bound to see that their children can 
" read, write and cipher." Primary schools 
are maintained by the town and are con- 
ducted largely along the lines first de- 
veloped by Dr. Thomas Edward Shields 
in the early twentieth century. Beyond 
primary grades the schools are maintained 
by various units such as the guilds, the par- 
ish and the monasteries and convents. 
While considerable variation exists as be- 
tween one school and another, they are all 
under the supervision of the Director of 
Education in order that certain standards 
may be maintained. Variety both in sub- 
jects taught and in methods followed is held 
to be most desirable, and complete freedom 
of choice exists between the schools, though 
a parent wishing to send a child to some 
school other than those maintained by his 
own guild pays an annual fee for the privi- 
lege. Beyond reading, writing, arithmetic 
and music, which are common to all, the 

[84] 



WALLED TOWNS 

curriculum varies widely, though history, 
literature and Latin are practically univer- 
sal. In some schools mathematics will be 
carried further than in others, in some 
natural science, while elsewhere literature, 
history, modern languages will be empha- 
sized. There is no effort to subject all chil- 
dren to the same methods and to force them 
to follow the same courses, — quite the re- 
verse; neither is the object the carrying of 
all children through the same schools to the 
same point. It is held that beyond a certain 
stage most children profit little or nothing 
by continued intensive study. On the other 
hand, there are always those whose de- 
sires and capacities would carry them to 
the limit. These are watched for with the 
most jealous care, and if a boy or girl 
shows special aptitude along any particular 
line he becomes an honour student, and 
thereafter he is in a sense a ward of the 
community, being sent without charge to 
the higher schools, the college, and even 
on occasion to some university beyond the 
limits of the Walled Town if he can gain 
there something not available within the 
walls. Of course any student may continue 
as far as he likes, or is able, but this is not 

[85] 



WALLED TOWNS 

encouraged except in the case of the honour 
student, and he must himself meet his own 
expenses. The authorities are particularly 
careful to discover any special ability in any 
of the arts, literature and philosophy, and it 
is the boast of the Walled Towns that no one 
who gives promise along any one of these 
lines need fail of achievement through lack 
of opportunity. In the case of the various 
crafts also the same care is exercised, and a 
boy showing particular aptitude is at once 
given the opportunity of entrance into the 
proper guild as an apprentice, after he has 
been prepared for this by a modified course 
of instruction adapted to his particular 
ability. 

The college has something the effect of a 
blending of New College, Oxford, and St. 
John's, Cambridge. It is perhaps the most 
beautiful element in the Walled Town, and 
here every intellectual, spiritual and artistic 
quality is fostered to {he fullest degree. 
The college is a corporation under control 
of the alumni and the faculty, not in the 
hands of trustees, as was the unfortunate 
fashion amongst American universities in 
the nineteenth century. There are many 
fellowships granted for notable achieve- 
[86] 



WALLED TOWNS 

ments along many lines, and a Fellow may 
claim free food and lodgings for life, if he 
choose, the return being certain service of 
a limited nature in the line of instruction, 
either as lecturer or preceptor. A few 
students are received from without the 
walls, but the number may not exceed five 
per cent of the student body, and high fees 
are charged for the privilege. There are 
no regular courses divided into four years. 
An honour student must take his Bachel- 
or's Degree within six years, his Master's 
Degree in not less than two years thereafter, 
and his Doctorate in another four years, 
otherwise his privilege lapses and he must 
pay as other students, in which case there 
are no limits whatever and a man may 
spend a lifetime in study if he desires — 
and can pay the price. All the regular 
members of the Faculty must be burgesses, 
but many lecture courses are given by visit- 
ing professors from all parts of the world. 
Latin is a prerequisite for the Bachelor's 
and Master's Degrees, and Greek for a 
Doctorate, whatever the line that may be 
followed. 

As has been said above, the recreation 
quarter of the town is around a square or 

[87] 



WALLED TOWNS 

garden a short distance from the central 
square.. Here are to be found the public 
baths and gymnasium, together with a 
number of gay and attractive cafes and res- 
taurants, the theatres, concert halls, etc. To 
a very great extent all the music and drama 
are the product of the people themselves. 
As has been said, music is almost the foun- 
dation of the educational system, therefore 
trained as they are from earliest childhood, 
good music, vocal, instrumental, orchestral, 
even operatic, is a natural and even inevit- 
able result. The same is true of the drama, 
and nightly plays, operas, concerts are 
given by the townspeople themselves which 
reach a standard comparable with that of 
professionals elsewhere. Now and then, 
as a mark of special commendation, actors, 
singers and musicians are invited by the 
Provost and Council to visit the town, but 
as a general thing all is done by the people 
themselves. The moving picture show is 
prohibited. 

With all the rich pageantry of life in a 
Walled Town, the magnificent church serv- 
ices, where all the arts assemble in the 
greatest aesthetic synthesis man has ever 
devised, the religious and secular festivals 

[88] 



WALLED TOWNS 

with their processions and merrymaking 
and dancing, the form and ceremony of 
ecclesiastical and civic life, and the unbroken 
environment of beauty, the craving for 
" shows" which holds without the walls 
and must be satisfied by tawdry and sensa- 
tional dramatic performances, professional 
entertainers and the " movies," is largely 
absent here where all life is couched in 
terms of true drama and living beauty. 
Here is no hard line of demarcation be- 
tween a drab and sordid and hustling daily 
life on the one hand, and " amusement" on 
the other. All the arts are in constant use, 
and music and drama are merely extensions 
of this common use into slightly different 
fields. The same holds good of the other 
arts. An "art museum" is unknown, for 
it is a contradiction in terms. The Walled 
Town is full of pictures and sculpture and 
all the products of the art-crafts; but the 
latter are in every household, while the 
pictures and sculptures are in all the 
churches and public buildings, where they 
belong, and are constantly and universally 
visible. If an old picture is obtained, or 
a Mediaeval statue or a tapestry, it is at once 
placed in a position similar to that for 

[89] 



WALLED TOWNS 

which it was originally intended. It would 
be perfectly impossible for the authorities 
to put a Bellini altar-piece in a yawning 
museum, jostled by crowded others and 
visible on week-days on payment of an ad- 
mission fee, " Saturday afternoon and Sun- 
day free." Instead it is placed over an 
altar in the parish church or in some chapel. 
There are museums of sorts, but they are 
connected with the guild halls and contain 
only models for instruction and emulation. 

And what of the social organism as it has 
developed under these definite modes of 
action? In the first place there are certain 
explicit inhibitions, as has already been in- 
dicated, the elimination of many details of 
luxury and artificial desires which tend to 
turn much human energy to futile ends, to 
raise the cost of living to abnormal heights, 
to establish false levels between those that 
have and those that have not, and that de- 
feat every sane effort towards a simplifica- 
tion of life and its maintenance in accord- 
ance with right standards of comparative 
value. Desires have not been reduced in 
force, but they have been vastly cut down 
in number and turned towards real values. 
Owing to the ban on usury and the unearned 

[90] 



WALLED TOWNS 

increment, and the restoration of production 
for use in place of production for profit, 
wide variations in wealth no longer exist, 
although there are still differences due to 
thrift, more intelligent or prolonged work, 
and above all to superiority in the thing 
produced. Variations in social status still 
exist; indeed they are fostered, as a matter of 
fact, but they are no longer based either on 
money or on power. A Walled Town is at 
the same time individualist, cooperative 
and aristocratic, so far more closely resem- 
bling Mediaeval society than any other that 
has existed, and therefore sharply differ- 
entiated both from society as it had become 
in the nineteenth century, and as it was 
aimed at by the socialists, the anarchists and 
the democrats of the same period. As all 
society is organized in guilds, and as in 
each there are the three classes of appren- 
tices, journeymen and masters, so while 
each class has its own recognized status, 
there is an equally recognized difference 
between them. An apprentice may not 
hold land, therefore he cannot be a burgess 
of the free city, while a journeyman or 
master may not become a burgess unless he 
does hold land, and only burgesses partici- 

[91] 



WALLED TOWNS 

pate in the civic duties and privileges of the 
town. There are certain offices which only 
a master may hold, and there are others 
which are open only to those masters who 
have become members of one of the 
Academies, or who belongs to the Order of 
Knighthood. The Provost, for example, 
may be chosen only from amongst the 
knights. These highest ranks of dignity 
are constituted as follows : 

In each Walled Town there are several 
Academies, each made up of those masters 
in the several guilds who have achieved the 
highest eminence. There is one Academy 
of Science and Craft, an Academy of Arts 
and Letters, an Academy of Philosophy, 
etc. Entrance into this circle of supreme 
achievement is effected either by direct 
choice of the members of the Academy, in 
which case the guild from which the can- 
didate is chosen must ratify the choice, or 
by nomination on the part of the guild, 
when the recommendation so made must be 
sanctioned by the members of the Academy. 
Only high proficiency in some specified 
direction is ground for election to these 
Academies, and membership is an honour 
of the greatest distinction. The Order of 

[92] 



WALLED TOWNS 

Knighthood, however, is conferred rather 
for high qualities of character and for pub- 
lic service; any man, apprentice, minor 
official, servant, may be made a Knight 
if he demonstrates some high quality of 
honour or service. Here the power to 
nominate lies in the hands both of the 
Provost and of the knights themselves, but 
the latter have the right to confirm or reject 
the nominee of the Provost, while he has the 
same power if the nomination comes from 
the knights. Both the Academies and the 
knights have the right to degrade and ex- 
pel a member of their own order; but when 
this is done it must be as the result of an 
open trial, if the accused so demands. Con- 
viction of certain crimes and offences works 
degradation automatically. 

The object of these higher circles of 
specially chosen individuals is the official 
recognition of character and achievement 
and the constituting of certain groups of dis- 
tinguished men whose duty it is to guard 
the highest ideals, not only of their own 
crafts, but of society itself through the free 
city which embodies their communal life. 
The Walled Towns know well that, while 
all men are equal in the sight of God and 

[93] 



WALLED TOWNS 

before the Law, there is otherwise no such 
thing as equality, that it would be fatal 
were it ever achieved, and that the efforts at 
its accomplishment have undermined such 
society as we once had until it has crumbled 
and crashed into the unhandsome debris 
of its own ruin. The determination of in- 
equalities by false standards of comparative 
value is almost as ill-favoured a thing as 
a doctrinaire equality; between the cash 
values of the bourgeois nineteenth century 
and the crazy overturnings and levellings 
and topsy-turvydom of twentieth century 
" democracy," or Bolshevism, there is little 
to choose. High values, few, cherished, 
recognized and honoured, are one great end 
of society, of life itself, and it is in these 
crowning marks of distinction and achieve- 
ment that humanity finds its best expression 
as well as its safe guides and sure leaders. 
In the Walled Towns is always the ardent 
quest for something to honour, whether it 
is some concrete product of art, science, 
letters, craftsmanship, or whether it is a 
citizen, an ideal, a memory of the past, a 
figure in history, a saint — or God Himself. 
Honour, service, loyalty, worship, — these 
things have wholly taken the place of an 

[94] 



WALLED TOWNS 

insolent assurance of equality, a bawling 
about rights, a denial of superiority, a 
proclaiming of the omnipotence of men 
" by virtue of their manhood alone." 



[95] 



IT will be evident at once that the 
Walled Towns are founded in deliber- 
ate opposition to nineteenth century de- 
mocracy as well as to its bastard issue, its 
Mordred and its Nemesis, anarchy and 
Bolshevism, and to its inevitable but blood- 
kin enemy, socialism. Through state so- 
cialism, communism or internationalism a 
fool-hardy and illiterate democracy, sur- 
rendering at discretion to the materialism 
of industrial civilization, has striven to 
maintain the thing itself in all its integrity 
and its wealth-producing potency while 
turning its products into the hands of the 
many rather than the few. Even now, with 
the myrrh of war still bitter on the lips, the 
dim visions of greater things are fading 
away, and only one cry goes up for ever 
greater production, for more intensive ef- 
fort, in order that the material losses may 
be retrieved. 

Neither by state-socialism nor by Soviets 

[96] 



WALLED TOWNS 

nor by any other ingenious device can 
wholesome social conditions be brought out 
of a thing unwholesome in itself; neither 
can a new control, a new basis of production 
and distribution, or new laws, compacts and 
covenants, take the place of a new spiritual 
energy, a new vision of ultimate values and 
their relationships. That communism, col- 
lectivism and social democracy have all 
gone bankrupt during and following the 
war is one truth at least we have learned. 
The methods were foolish enough but the 
object aimed at, the preservation and re- 
demption of modern industrialism, was 
worse. 

The impulse and incentive towards 
Walled Towns, whenever it comes, will be 
primarily social, the revolt of man against 
the imperial scale, against a life of false 
values impregnably intrenched behind cus- 
tom, superstition and self-interest, against 
the quantitative standard, the tyranny of 
bulk, the gross oppression of majorities. It 
will echo a demand for beauty in life and 
of life, for the reasonable and wholesome 
unit of human scale, for high values in ideal 
and in action, for simplicity and distinction 
and a realization of true aristocracy. En- 

[97] 



WALLED TOWNS 

gendered of a new spiritual outlook, it may 
be fostered by the compulsion of circum- 
stance, for in spite of the brave front as- 
sumed by those who even now are looking 
towards a future, it becomes daily more 
apparent that the war has destroyed modern 
society and that in spite of all the best in- 
tentions in the world it can never be re- 
stored. The whole fabric of industrial 
civilization, already rotten at heart, has 
collapsed ; it could not save the world from 
universal war and it possesses no power to 
enforce its own recuperation. In five years 
the potential in men has been cut down by 
millions, an enormous amount of machinery 
for production and transportation has been 
destroyed, together with much arable land 
and many mines. The birth-rate steadily 
decreases all over the world and with no 
evident prospect of a reversal of the process. 
The debts of all the warring nations have 
reached a point where in some cases the in- 
terest charges alone will almost amount 
to the whole pre-war budget. The entire 
system of credit and of international finance 
has become hopelessly disorganized and no 
one has yet suggested any way in which it 
may adequately be restored. Neither ar- 

[98]' 



WALLED TOWNS 

mistice nor peace has brought about even 
the beginnings of industrial recovery; the 
demand is fabulous and acute, but the 
problems of raw materials, transportation, 
credits, and of markets that will not only 
take but also pay, are apparently unsolv- 
able; meanwhile national debts are still 
increasing through the payment of enor- 
mous amounts to the unemployed. 

To meet the crisis there is an unanimous 
cry for a resumption of production, and for a 
vastly augmented output through increased 
efficiency and more intensive methods, but 
the crying is in vain, for meanwhile the 
working element has entered on a course of 
restriction that will inevitably nullify every 
effort at increasing the output. Partly 
through its pre-war victories in the contest 
with capital, partly through the abnormal 
wage returns brought into being through 
the desperation of the managers of the war, 
labour is now successfully engaged in the 
work of cutting down production far be- 
low what it was even ten years ago, both by 
reducing the hours of work and by vastly 
augmenting the wage. The actual produc- 
tivity of a " labour unit" today is less than 
at any time since industrialism became the 

[99] 



WALLED TOWNS 

controlling element in life, and in many cate- 
gories it is less and less productive of satis- 
factory results. Under these conditions it 
is hard to see just how the reconstructionists 
expect to obtain that greatly increased out- 
put they admit is the only visible hope of 
saving the world from bankruptcy, chaos 
and barbarism. 

The contest is an unfair one, for the en- 
trance of Bolshevism has added a new 
factor hitherto unknown. Enraged by the 
failure of strikes and other war measures to 
improve their condition, labour is increas- 
ingly turning to the small minority of 
avowed revolutionists who proclaim the 
rather obvious fact that so long as industry 
is engineered by the two antagonistic forces 
of capitalism and proletarianism, no perma- 
nent improvement in the state of the latter 
is possible. Every increase in wages is 
followed automatically by a greater in- 
crease in the cost of living, and the ratio 
today between a wage of eighty cents an 
hour and the cost of food, clothing and 
shelter, is less advantageous than was the 
case when this sum represented not a wage 
per hour, but per day. The reason for this 
state of things is not thought out with any 
[ioo] 



WALLED TOWNS 

particular degree of exactness, and the leap 
is made in the dark to revolution, confisca- 
tion and, of late, to Bolshevism. The ease 
with which an insignificant, alien and un- 
scrupulous minority has succeeded in de- 
stroying society in Russia and Hungary, and 
the apparent ease with which the same theory 
has almost been carried out in Germany, 
and may be carried out in France and Italy 
— not to speak of North Dakota — has 
aroused all the latent savagery and the 
impulse to revolt in large sections of the 
working classes, but it has also completely 
terrorized the politicians if not the capital- 
ists themselves, and the menace of anarchy 
is met cringingly and half-heartedly. It 
has even acquired a strong if somewhat 
veiled defence among contemporary di- 
rectors of human destiny. 

Were it not for the results of Bolshevism 
wherever it is being tried, the situation 
might appear hopeless, for it begins to look 
very much as though the attitude of labour, 
now apparently fixed, would make impos- 
sible the industrial restoration on which 
statesmen, captains of industry and high 
financiers count for the saving of the situa- 
tion. If this fails then there appears no 

[ioi] 



WALLED TOWNS 

escape from international bankruptcy and 
a complete breakdown of the modern social 
system, with all this implies of poverty, un- 
employment and even starvation. This is 
the breeding-ground of Bolshevism, but the 
hope lies in the fact which is becoming more 
apparent every day, that the thing is even 
worse for the proletarian than for the cap- 
italist or the man of culture and education, 
the criminal being the only one that derives 
any profit from the adventure. A few 
months more of Lenine, Trotsky and Bela 
Kun, and the danger of Bolshevism will 
have passed, so far certainly as the United 
States, Great Britain, France and Italy are 
concerned. 

Yet with the removal of this peril the pos- 
sibility of a social and industrial break- 
down still remains, and whether in antici- 
pation thereof, or as a forced expedient 
under sudden catastrophe, the Walled 
Town offers itself as a means of solution, 
since it does not depend for its existence on 
the maintenance or recovery of the pre-war 
industrial system — rather on its rejection 
and reversal — while equally it is the pro- 
phylactic against Bolshevism and its entire 
reversal. 

[102] 



WALLED TOWNS 

And so the Walled Towns go back to an 
earlier age before modernism began; back 
to the dim cities, the proud cities, the free 
cities of centuries ago. They wall them- 
selves against the world without, and build 
up within their grey ramparts, and guard 
with their tall towers, a life that is simpler 
and more beautiful and more joyful and 
more just than that they had known and 
rejected because of its folly and its sin. As, 
long ago, when the world became too gross 
or the terror of its downfall too ominous, 
cell and hermitage, convent and monastery 
grew up now here, now there, in secluded 
valleys, on inaccessible mountains, in the 
barren and forgotten wilderness; as the 
solitary drew around him first a handful, 
then a horde; as the damp cave or the 
wattled hut gave way to multitudinous 
buildings and spacious cloisters and the tall 
towers of enormous churches, so now, when 
time has come full circle again, is all to be 
done over once more though after a different 
fashion. 

Men have despaired of redeeming a 
crumbling or recalcitrant world and have 
gone out into the desert for the saving of 
their own souls, and lo, the world followed 

[103] 



WALLED TOWNS 

and by them was saved. From each centre 
of righteousness and beauty and salvation 
radiated circle after circle of ever widening 
influence; the desert and the waste became 
orchard and garden, the ribald and the 
lawless and the insolent came knocking at 
the gates; soldier and bravo and king 
humbled their heads before tonsured monk 
and mitred abbot. Ever wider waxed the 
increasing circles until they touched, 
merged, — and the wonder was accom- 
plished; ill had come to an end and good 
had come into being. 

So the Walled Towns, now when the 
need is clamorous again. Evil imperial 
in scale cannot be blotted out by reform 
imperial in method. The old way was 
the good way, the way of withdrawal and 
of temporary isolation. "To your tents, O 
Israel!" Gather together the faithful and 
them of like heart, building in the wilder- 
ness sanctuaries and Cities of Refuge. The 
old ideals are indestructible; they survive 
through the scorching of suns and the beat- 
ing of tempests and as ever they are omnipo- 
tent when they are rightly used. Not for 
long would the Walled Towns stand aloof, 
and rampired against an alien and unkindly 
[104] 



WALLED TOWNS 

world, for more and more would men be 
drawn within their magical circuits, greater 
and ever greater would become their num- 
ber, and at last the new wonder would be 
accomplished and society once more 
redeemed. 



[105] 



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